Ocean Quest Online

If you want your cruise to have a little more thought behind it, consider taking an OceanQuest cruise. While you won’t be traveling through exotic island locales (it’s in Woods Hole, MA), and you won’t need to pack for a week’s worth of time (it’s a one-day trip), you will get one experience lacking anywhere else. On the OceanQuest Discovery cruise, you get to actually use the vessel’s research equipment to learn about the body of water that covers 70 of our planet.The boat is divided into three different stations. In the back (or sternprospective passengers have to start learning the lingo), travellers focus on the life of the ocean, pulling up lobster traps and plankton nets and examining microorganisms under a Discovery Scope. In the bow of the ship, passengers have the opportunity to operate the equipment that teaches scientists about the physical and meteorological makeup of the ocean. Finally, when guests head in to the cabin, they are treated to exploring the chemistry of seawater. (more…)

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The nonprofit Ocean Research & Conservation Association was founded by Dr. Edith Widder in 2005. Dr. Widder has a long history of exploring the deep oceans, starting as a Scientific Research Pilot at Atmospheric Diving Systems and later gaining experience with the diving suit WASP and the submersibles DEEP ROVER and DEEP WORKER. Learning more about the ocean floor helps us learn more about the effect humans are having on the environment and, more importantly, what we can change to keep the oceans a place of relaxation and refuge for people and animals alike.To that end, the ORCA Kilroy was developed, beginning in 2006 and completed in 2008, as another way to monitor the life signs of the ocean. The football-sized monitors record ocean speeds, direction, salinity, temperature, and levels of key microorganisms, 24/7. The device also has a bathyphotometer for monitoring biological elements like dinoflagellates and comb jellies. (more…)

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