16. Career in Ocean Sciences
Ask questions
Be interested in sciences
Learn how to solve problems/critical
thinking
Learn how to write
Work hard and develop grit
Many avenues to a career in ocean
sciences besides scientist: technicians,
engineers, AUV drivers,
finance/economists, politics, media
McLane makes underwater robots that allow scientists to travel through time and space. My company makes profilers, samplers, and flotation, here on Cape Cod.
Important mission that needs the best minds. 70% of the surface of the earth, 97% of the water on earth and control the weather, and all life on earth. Peace and War may hinge on access to water.
Map: DATE, name
Look at the Europe to the East– the UK is recognizable, as is France. The Americas, not so much.
Cartographers would put “Hic Sunt dracones” Here be dragons to show the limits of the known world.
Here’s another map from the 1770s– Ben Franklin, the father of Oceanography. US ships beat English ships by nearly 2 weeks– any by compiling good observations of ocean currents off the US East Coast he mapped the Gulf Stream, a fast-moving current of warm surface water that sweeps up from Florida, along the continental slope off the US East Coast, and then bends eastward across the North Atlantic all the way to Europe. Franklin was the first to refer to the Gulf Stream as a “river in the ocean.” As Deputy Postmaster General of the American colonies, Franklin promoted using the Gulf Stream to speed up delivery of mail from America to Europe, as well as to improve other commercial shipping. Interviewing his cousin, a whaler. Science and government: map largely ignored.
Human knowledge and what’s been explored is 20% of the earth– that’s all that we know about world.
Imagine living in a house, and your entire world is the kitchen– no idea of what’s out side. That’s us.
But whether you are doing the biology, chemistry, physics of the ocean– it’s hard to do.
WHOI Atlantis – not the first but one of the most famous research ships– A Space shuttle was name after it. They started to doing transects in the ocean, and systematically studying the ocean.
But this has drawbacks – one scientist described it dragging a kite behind a car in the dark at random times of the year to describe life on earth.
IF the first wave was going out on boats– and that lasted a long time, from Franklin’s time to about the 1980s. But right now is a renaissance of ocean tech.
The second wave is putting stuff in the Ocean. Doug Web who lives in Falmouth invented them.
Temperature, salinity and depth.
Maps are no longer pipes—and we understand that ocean, like our atmosphere changes evert day.
These are tools that allow us to travel in time and space: Time and Space
Your very own node! Power, coms, infrastructure.
Collects water and photographs everything in the water. Developed by a scientists in Woods Hole, built in Falmouth by us.
Millions of images a day– which are then classified.
IF
Move through time and space: A time series from 2006. Click through to see what’s in your water. This device also guards against some Red tide species, and helps scientists understand the ecology of the ocean. Fishing and aquaculture industry.
So if a career in dragon slaying is right for you. . . I’ll refrain from saying “Stay in school.” Fall down 7 times, get up eight.
I’d like to close with a picture of not a dragon but of a pterapod. Tiny delicate creatures with a calcium shell. (Clioone minmacina) With the oceans absorbing manmade carbon, the oceans are rapidly becoming more acidic, and in some habitats the shells are melting. I hope that some of you consider a career of saving not only our oceans, but the world.