It has been four years since my last oceanographic research cruise. It was July 2014 when I joined fellow scientists and graduate students in Iceland  to board the Research Vessel Knorr to kick off an international expedition to put in place a huge coast-to-coast array of instruments across the North Atlantic Ocean. This array of instruments continuously measures ocean currents, water temperature and salinity from the sea floor to the sea surface. This project is called OSNAP, which stands for Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program  (http://www.o-snap.org). Seven countries have put their resources together to undertake this important effort to monitor all the currents between Canada and Scotland that play a role in Earth’s climate system. The sensors have been hard at work measuring the ocean conditions since 2014, and after every couple of years, they need their batteries replaced.

So, it’s back to Iceland again, this time to board the newest research vessel operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Research Vessel Neil Armstrong. We plan to depart from Iceland’s capital city, Reykjavik, on June 5, 2018, and spend three weeks in the waters east of Greenland pulling up the instruments, replacing batteries and then re-setting them.

This will be my first research cruise on the R/V Armstrong, and I’m very excited. I loved the R/V Knorr, the ship that took me on many an expedition around the world, but due to its age, it wasn’t the most accessible research vessel for a visually impaired scientist like me. The lighting was not great, the layout wasn’t very straight-forward, and there were tripping hazards all over the place. The R/V Armstrong on the other hand, has great modern lighting, stairways (called ladders on a ship, but they are more like slightly steep stairs) more like what one would find in any office building, and an arrangement of labs, cabins and offices that is neatly organized. While the Knorr was laid out like the streets of Boston, all going every which way, the Armstrong is like Washington, DC with it’s parallel streets and square blocks—much easier to navigate with a mobility (white) cane. Additionally, like a number of modern research vessels built recently in the  U.S., there is even an ADA-compliant cabin for me to sleep in!

While I’m at sea, I’ll maintain the Ocean Insight blog much more regularly, as I have done for past expeditions in 2007 and 2014. You can see posts from those research cruises under the Expeditions heading on the Ocean Insight web site. I also plan to include new “audio postcards” and arrange live phone calls with students in classrooms at several schools for the blind and visually impaired. So, check back often in the coming months to follow this next adventure in oceanography.

The ever-growing demand for oil and gas to fuel our cars, heat and air-condition our homes, transport ourselves overseas and power our iPhones has motivated oil companies to search for these fossil fuels almost everywhere on Earth, even under the ocean floor.  This includes the Gulf of Mexico, where rich reserves have been pumped from deep below the sea floor for decades. As the demand grows, and technology becomes more sophisticated, drilling rigs are being set up farther and farther from shore and in deeper water than ever. this increases the risk of an oil spill in the  ocean  that can kill marine life, damage natural ecosystems and harm the fishing industry.

Scientists and the public often focus on the spreading of spilled oil and other pollutants at the sea surface. The oil floating on the surface is easy to see and although it makes a huge mess and causes many problems, we can use ships, satellites with sophisticated cameras and other tools to track where the oil is spreading.  The spilled oil is hard to contain and clean up, but at least if we can see where it is, we have a chance.

Some oil and gas that is released in a spill such as the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 does not float to the sea surface but spreads out deep in the ocean, even as deep as a half mile down. It is Impossible to “see” where this oil is going and where it might have an impact on deep marine life.  The deep currents that would carry the oil from the spill site in the Gulf of Mexico are almost a complete mystery .

My oceanographer colleagues and I have for the past several years been measuring the currents of the deep Gulf of Mexico using an armada of hundreds of buoys   that sink down to the depth where oil might spread and drift with the currents there. Since we can’t physically see where they are going, we need to use sound to track them underwater. We have anchored several sound beacons that the buoys listen for to track their progress. Almost everything that these buoys are teaching us has never been discovered before. For example, there is a deep current all around the rim of the Gulf of Mexico, as well as deep swirls of water called eddies. Both would play a role in moving deep spilled oil  around the Gulf of Mexico.

To help teach K-12 students about the different kinds of currents we are discovering, we joined Professor  Carla Curran from Savannah State University in Georgia to develop a hands-on classroom activity using pipe cleaners   to illustrate the tracks of the buoys. Professor Carla is an expert in translating recent scientific research for K-12 students and she has developed more than 20 such hands-on teaching tools about many topics in oceanography. We were pleased to work with her on this project. It is unique in that it is designed to be interesting and accessible to both sighted and blind or visually impaired students. Free copies of the report describing the activity and the science behind it are available for free (while supplies last) at this link:

http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/3aQh7A7kmSYWa4ZKBC59/full

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited on an “ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) tour” of a brand new oceanographic research vessel, the R/V Sikuliaq. Commissioned by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), the Sikuliaq will be operated by the University of Alaska. It’s ice-strengthened hull will allow it to work in the Arctic for much of the year.

This vessel is somewhat unique in the U.S. academic fleet in that it was designed with a number of significant accommodations for persons with disabilities. Because research vessels are not “passenger vessels” , they are not required by federal law to have access in the same ways as ferries and public transit boats (water taxis etc). But about 8 years ago, the NSF and the University National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS), the agency that is responsible for the U.S. oceanographic fleet, assembled ship operators, designers and some scientists to discuss how new research vessels could be made to be more accessible to all. Read More→