After 40 years Going to Sea … a ‘First’ for Me on this Cruise
A typical cabin on a research vessel looks mostly like a college dorm room—bunk beds, a desk, drawers and lockers for clothes, and that is about it. Most often, the two who share the cabin also share a bathroom (called a head in boat language) with two people from another cabin. Sometimes several cabins share…
Where’s My Room!
Blind people who use a smart phone are likely taking advantage of one of the most important new technologies of the past couple of decades, that is, the Global Positioning System (GPS for short). What is the GPS anyway? The GPS is a large number of satellites orbiting the Earth that allow you to find…
DIY (“Do It Yourself”) Moorings
In my last post, I described the main goal of our upcoming research cruise on the R/V Armstrong, that is, to set up four deep-sea moorings in the ocean east of Greenland. These moorings will have sensors on them to measure the water temperature, salinity, and the speed and direction of the currents. They will…
Shipping Day!
In some ways, today is the real first day of the upcoming oceanographic research cruise on the R/V Armstrong. This is the day that all the equipment for the cruise is being loaded into a shipping container that will be trucked to Portland, Maine and loaded onto a container vessel headed for Iceland. The Armstrong…
Time to Go to Sea Again!
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…
Untangling Spaghetti: Tracking Deep Currents in the Gulf of Mexico
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…
Another Step Forward for Accessible Science
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…
- « Previous
- 1
- …
- 3
- 4
- 5
About Amy Bower
Amy Bower is a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She has been chasing ocean currents in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans for over 25 years, primarily by releasing acoustically tracked floats far below the sea surface. Legally blind since her mid-20s, Amy uses adaptive technology to continue her research.
Related Links
Subscribe by Email
Completely spam free, opt out any time.