AMS Ocean Studies Diversity Project

http://www.ametsoc.org/amsedu/online/oceaninfo/diversity.html

Been at the AMS Ocean Studies Diversity Project all week. Its been absolutely fascinating. The idea of this workshop is to learn how to best implement the AMS "Ocean Studies" course, which is set up to be offered aqs a live course, a hybrid course, or a completely online course. Given that is has a lab function built into it, making it an online course would be fabulous. Our department doesn't have any all online or true hybrid courses right now, but the campus, I believe, has some. If we were to implement this as an all online course, that'd be great. So many of our students work full time and have other beyond-school responsibilities, so I think that not having to come to campus at a specific time to sit in lecture or perform lab activities would really make a difference for them, and be a real attractive option.
Part and parcel of preparing to implement this course includes meeting with researchers and hearing talks from them on their latest efforts. We've also been able to visit the NOAA Pacific Marine Environment Laboratories and Labs at the University of Washington School of Oceanography. Both institutions are heavily involved in the ARGO Float project, an incredible program that currently operates an array of 3,111 ocean going robots. These robots dive to 1,000 m water depth, travel along oceanic currents, and then at a pre-set time dive deeper down to 2,000 m, from which they begin a slow and steady ascent to the surface, collecting CTD data along the way. The newer floats collect optical data, perform wet chemistry on water samples, and do other things. Other researchers at PMEL were responsible for setting up and maintaining the array of oceanographic buoys that allow us to determine if there is going to be an El Nino or a La Nina each particular year, and how intense its going to be, when we're moving out of those conditions, etc. Still other offices at PMEL are charged with responding to ocean emergencies, like oil spills, chemical spills, even derelict ships and other hazards. We also saw some of their fabrication facilities, and their dissolved CO2 lab. One of the wilder pieces of equipment that we saw included self-deploying buoys. A small fishing ship could literally swing one of these small devices into the sea, it will open up, drop its own anchor and a spool of cable allowing it to be moored, and it will start transmitting data.
The talks that we've been getting about the research thats come out of the deployment of this sort of equipment has also been fascinating. Everyone seems to be really interested, we're running out of time at each event because of all the really great questions that everyone's been asking.