Education: The Ocean is a Hostile Environment
Despite many images and videos of calm, flat seas, the ocean is actually a constantly changing place; the result of winds, currents, and atmospheric processes that combine to form turbulence and chaos below the waves. This presents an interesting challenge to scientists as they develop in-water instrumentation that is meant to last for years of data collecting.
Dr. Tom Farrar dicusses how scientists design surface moorings to stay in one place in the middle of the ocean while simultaneously collecting data for up to one year at a time.
Dr. Fred Bingham describes how a new type of float - called a Lagrangian float - is used for at-sea salinty research.
Collecting data has many challenges, whether it is in the ocean, or the vast and hostile environment of space. Dr. Eric Lindstrom addresses some of the challenges of collecting good data in difficult conditions.
Surface moorings collect continuous data from a single point in the ocean. Dr. Tom Farrar explains the types of instrumentation often found atop one of these moorings.
