Learning at Sea

History of UW Live Broadcasts from Sea

History of UW Live Broadcasts from Sea

Join us for the VISIONS 12 Expedition, September 1 - 20, 2012

Once again a University of Washington team of oceanographers and engineers associated with the OOI regional cabled observatory program will take students to sea and will broadcast their at-sea explorations live via the Internet to audiences around the world. VISIONS 12 will take place on the UW-operated Research Vessel Thomas G. Thompson and will deploy ROPOS, a state-of-the-art remotely operated vehicle--a tethered underwater robot equipped to explore the seafloor and send back HD video in real-time.

For over two decades the University of Washington has enabled at-sea experiences for K-12 and community college teachers and for undergraduate and graduate students through cruise participation. Over 80 teachers participated in the Research and Education: Volcanoes, Exploration, and Life (REVEL) program, a professional development program for science teachers across the nation. The REVEL project provided teachers an opportunity to engage in science by pursuing cutting-edge research alongside scientists at sea.

The UW has continued its committment to providing students direct hands-on learning experiences by providing 15 days of ship time per year to the OOI  Regional Scale Nodes Observatory effort using the 274' global class research ship, the Research Vessel Thomas G. Thompson. Each year, 10 to 15 undergraduate and graduate students work along side UW researchers to learn all aspects of seagoing research, ship operations, and life aboard an oceanographic reseach vessel.

During the cruises students develop projects around the use of robotic vehicles, mapping, and linkages among geological, biological, chemical, and physical oceanographic processes. Students share their experiences with the public by contributing to a live web site. In 2009, the LUMENS'09 Expedition continued the tradition, but with an unexpected twist: equipment malfunctions on the Thompson, led to the cruise's cancellation. The team of students returned to the UW campus and completed their learning experience onshore using archived data from the INSITE '08 expedition.

In 2010, 13 undergraduate and graduate students participated in the ENLIGHTEN '10 Expedition. The primary purpose of this research cruise, which sailed on the University of Washington's R/V Thomas G. Thompson, was to map and photograph the seafloor in preparation for the installation of secondary infrastructure (nodes, junction boxes, sensors, moorings, and extension cables) for the OOI RSN. Student projects ranged from groundtruthing bathymetry to changes in plankton population depth profiles, from describing currents to lava morphologies.