Nile Akel Kevis-Stirling is the owner/operator of Kevis-Stirling Marine Services. He is available for hire as an ROV pilot and navigator or as a freelance geophysics consultant, either offshore or at a Client's premises.

Akel currently spends much of his time working with WHOI as part of their specialist operations team for Jason, partaking in many and varied research surveys as a navigator, pilot and data and systems manager. He has also worked for Fugro Survey Limited and HMRG as a geophysicist on research, pipeline and site surveys. He has experience of working in the Pacific, Southern and Atlantic Oceans, the North Sea and the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. He has worked on all classes of vessel and in water depths from shallow in-shore to deep mid-ocean.

In addition to working offshore, Akel is extremely experienced in data management, as well as the processing, interpretation and reporting of geophysical data.

Background

He graduated from the University of Hawaii Manoa in 1998 with an honours Bachelor degree in Geophysics. Following his first experience on a research survey in 1998 he decided to pursue his interest in marine geophysics by entering graduate school, also at the University of Hawaii Manoa. He continued his studies whilst being a research assistant for Prof. Paul Wessel, and completed his Masters degree in 2003 with a thesis on Pacific plate tectonics, specifically the Cenozoic changes in absolute plate motion.

Akel started working with the Hawaii Mapping Research Group in 2001, overlapping with his studies for his Masters. He specialised in side scan sonar, phase bathymetry and multibeam bathymetry acquisition, processing and interpretation and was often called on to trouble-shoot computer hardware and software issues. Part of his remit was to act as survey technician to set-up hardware on each research vessel prior to a survey.

During his six years with HMRG he was the primary liason with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) through the secondary development of their DSL-120a side scan sonar (now owned and operated by HMRG) to ensure the successful and useable output of sonar imagery and phase bathymetry. In addition he enabled the integration of data from an SM2000 multibeam echo sounder, magnetometer and other geophysical instruments. To accomplish this he extensively used MB-System, Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) and HMRG in-house processing software and became accomplished in computer code development.

Through his close relationship with WHOI, Akel became involved in working with their work-class Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) Jason/Medea. He moved to England in 2007, following his marriage to fellow marine geophysicist Dr. Jennie Kevis-Stirling (then Morgan), and became a freelance geophysicist through his company Kevis-Stirling Marine Services.

Akel can be contracted through his own company, Kevis-Stirling Marine Services, or through the UK agency Maritech Consultants Ltd.