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Volume 45

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5565 Sterrett Place, Suite 108Columbia, Maryland 21044

Marine Technology Society Journal

January/February 2011

JournalVolume 45 Number 1 January/February 2011

The International, Interdisciplinary Society Devoted to Ocean and Marine Engineering, Science, and Policy

United States Integrated Ocean Observing System: Our Eyes on Our Oceans, Coasts and Great Lakes: Part II

4IOOS: From Integrated to Interdependent and IndispensableZdenka Willis, Justin Manley

7The Importance of the Integrated Ocean Observing System to the U.S. Army Corps of EngineersWilliam T. Grisoli

9The Global Ocean Observing Component of IOOS: Implementation of the Initial Global Ocean Observing System for Climate and the Path ForwardJoel M. Levy, Derrick Snowden, Candyce Clark, Kathleen Crane, Howard J. Diamond, David Goodrich, Mike Johnson, Christopher D. Miller, William Murray, Stephen R. Piotrowicz, Diane Stanitski

19Successful Integration Efforts in Water Quality From the Integrated Ocean Observing System Regional Associations and the National Water Quality Monitoring NetworkRob Ragsdale, Eric Vowinkel, Dwayne Porter, Pixie Hamilton, Ru Morrison, Josh Kohut, Bob Connell, Heath Kelsey, Phil Trowbridge

29Contributions of the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System to National and Regional Coastal Hazards and Resources Information, Tools, and Services Chris E. Ostrander, Harvey Seim, Elizabeth Smith, Ben Studer, Audra Luscher-Aissauoi, Chip Fletcher

Volume 45, Number 1, January/February 2011

United States Integrated Ocean Observing System: Our Eyes on Our Oceans, Coasts and Great Lakes:

Part II

39United States Integrated Ocean Observing System and the Shellfish Growers PartnershipCarl Gouldman, Mark Wiegardt, Sue Cudd, Jessica Geubtner

43Alliance for Coastal Technologies: Advancing Moored pCO2 Instruments in Coastal WatersMario N. Tamburri, Thomas H. Johengen, Marlin J. Atkinson, Daniel W. H. Schar, Charles Y. Robertson, Heidi Purcell, G. Jason Smith, Alexei Pinchuk, Earle N. Buckley

52The Trans-Atlantic Slocum Glider Expeditions: A Catalyst for Undergraduate Participation in Ocean Science and TechnologyScott Glenn, Oscar Schofield, Josh Kohut, Janice McDonnell, Richard Ludescher, Dena Seidel, David Aragon, Tina Haskins, Ethan Handel, Clinton Haldeman, Igor Heifetz, John Kerfoot, Erick Lemus, Sage Lictenwalner, Lisa Ojanen, Hugh Roarty, Atlantic Crossing Students, European Exchange Students, Clayton Jones, Douglass Webb, Jerry Miller, Marlon Lewis, Scott McLean, Ana Martins, Carlos Barrera, Antonio Ramos, Enrique Fanjul

68A Simple, Effective Project Selection System for the Alaska Ocean Observing SystemSteve Colt, Ginny Fay, Molly McCammon

In This IssueCover: Back cover collage images courtesy of IOOS®.

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P A P E R

TheTrans-Atlantic SlocumGlider Expeditions:A Catalyst for Undergraduate Participationin Ocean Science and TechnologyA U T H O R SScott GlennOscar SchofieldJosh KohutJanice McDonnellRichard LudescherDena SeidelDavid AragonTina HaskinsEthan HandelClinton HaldemanIgor HeifetzJohn KerfootErick LemusSage LictenwalnerLisa OjanenHugh RoartyRutgers University

Atlantic Crossing Students, 2007-2010:Frank Acevido, Samuel Aparicio,Nicolette Aquilino, Karan Arora,Justin Ash, Brian Bachrach,Katie Bianchini, Amanda Bullis,Katie Carson, Joyhee Cho,MeganCimino,Kaycee Coleman, Alyssa Currie,Aissatou Diallo, Montana DiVita,Colin Evans, Nicholas Ewankov,Ana Filipa, Chris Filosa, Gina Francisco,Mario Garcia, Mike Garzio, Abe Gelb,Darcy Glenn, Dakota Goldinger,Melissa Grimm, Ethan Handel,Shannon Harrison, Danielle Holden,Erin Holswad, Holly Ibanez, Lisa Izzo,Dave Kaminsky, Marcus Kwasek,Anthony Lund, Joe Palmiery,Richa Patel, Emily Pirl, Andre Ramirez,Evan Randall, Dan Ravaioli,Kyle Richter, Leo Rishty,Emily Rogalsky, Steven Savard,Justin Shapiro, Jessica Silva,Mike Smith, Amelia Snow,Carisa Sousa, Nilsen Strandskov,Cael Sutherland, Eric Vowinkle,Jeff Wallace, Jason Werrel

European Exchange Students, 2009 :Filipa CarvalhoUniversity of the Azores, Horta, Portugal

Alvaro LopezAdri MartinPlataforma Oceanica de Canarias

Other AuthorsClayton JonesDouglass WebbTeledyne Webb Research Corporation

Jerry MillerOffice of Science and Technology Policy

Marlon LewisScott McLeanSatlantic, Inc., Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Ana MartinsUniversity of the Azores, Horta, Portugal

Carlos BarreraPlataforma Oceanica de Canarias

Antonio RamosUniversidad de Las Palmas deGranCanaria

Enrique FanjulPuertos del Estado, Madrid, Spain

A B S T R A C TResults of Office of Naval Research (ONR)- and National Science Foundation

(NSF)-sponsored collaborative coastal science experiments using underwatergliders were reported at the E.U./U.S. Baltic Sea conference in 2006. The NationalOceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recognized the parallel educa-tional potential and issued a trans-Atlantic challenge—modify one of the coastalgliders and fly it across the Atlantic, entraining and inspiring students along the way.Leveraging the experience of the NSF Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence,a needs assessment process guided the development of a new undergraduateresearch program based on the cognitive apprenticeship model. The generalizedmodel was applied to the specific opportunities provided by the trans-Atlantic chal-lenge, involving students in every aspect of the missions. Students participated inthe modifications and testing required to increase glider endurance and in thedevelopment of the mission planning tools. Scientist and student teams conductedthree long-duration missions: (1) RU15’s flight from New Jersey to Nova Scotia totest the lithium batteries and ruggedized fin technology in storms, (2) RU17’s firstattempt at the Atlantic crossing that provided the lessons learned, and (3) RU27’ssuccessful trans-Atlantic flight a year later. Post-flight activities included develop-ment of new intuitive glider data visualization software that enabled students toanalyze the glider data and compare it with ocean forecast models, enabling stu-dents to create their own new knowledge. Lessons learned include the significantgains achieved by engaging students early, encouraging them to work as teams,giving them the tools to make their own discoveries, and developing a near-peermentoring community for increasing retention and diversity. The success has in-spired an even broader vision for international glider missions, that of a glider-enabled global classroom to repeat the track of the HMS Challenger and its firstscientific circumnavigation of the globe.

52 Marine Technology Society Journal

Introduction

The field of oceanography isshaped by a rich history of expedi-tionary science. The inspiration pro-vided by our short times at sea hasspurred the imagination and creativ-ity of ocean scientists for centuries,prompting us to imagine and imple-ment new approaches for exploring,observing, understanding, and uti-lizing the world’s oceans. One visionfrom 22 years ago (Stommel, 1989)was that of a global ocean patrolledby Slocum underwater gliders guidedby satellite data and numerical modelforecasts. In Hank Stommel’s futuris-tic world, support for the networkwas galvanized by a 198-day trans-Atlantic flight of the glider Sentinel 1from Bermuda to northwest Africa.The mission was flown by researchersworking from an attic control room inthe Woods Hole Oceanographic Insti-tution’s Bigelow Building. At that timein Woods Hole’s history, the attic ofBigelow was occupied by oceanogra-phy students.

Since that inspirational vision waspublished, ocean glider technologyhas matured and now routinely an-chors scientific experiments, enablingscientists to conduct sustained andadaptively adjusted science missions(Davis et al., 2003; Schofield et al.,2007). The adaptive sampling capabil-ities of the gliders are enabled by theirability to navigate relative to the flowand the two-way communications pro-vided by the global Iridium network,allowing glider data to be sent to con-trol centers on shore and new samplingcommands to be sent back to the glid-ers at sea. As ocean observatories con-tinue to mature, coordinated fleetsof gliders are growing contributors tothe National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration (NOAA)-led U.S. In-tegrated Ocean Observing System

(IOOS®) (Schofield et al., 2010a),the National Science Foundation (NSF)Ocean Observing Initiative (OOI)(Schofield et al., 2010b), and theNavy’s Littoral Battlespace Sensing-Glider (LBS-G) initiative. Theseinitiatives and others are implement-ing what Walter Munk termed the1 + 1 = 3 scenario for ocean sampling(Munk, 2000), where a new oceanomnipresence is enabled by satellitesin space combined with vast in-waterarrays of drifting profilers, gliders,and time series stations. The approachnot only offers researchers new oppor-tunities for ocean science but also pro-vides a potential mechanism to sharethe real-time excitement of explorationand scientific discovery with studentsand the public.

The educational value of the gliderswas recognized by NOAA leadershipinMay of 2006 at the E.U./U.S. spon-sored conference promoting inter-national collaborations in the BalticSea. NOAA responded to the growingnumber of glider presentations with achallenge to take one of the existinggliders, modify it, and fly it across theAtlantic, entraining and inspiring stu-dents along the way. It was presentedas a response to the Rising Above theGathering Storm (2007) report’s ob-servation that while the vitality of theU.S. economy depends on the scien-tific and technological innovations ofa well-educated workforce, U.S. eco-nomic leadership was eroding partlybecause of the decreasing number ofstudents choosing science, math, andengineering careers. The trans-Atlanticglider mission was viewed as an oppor-tunity to re-spark interest in scienceand technology, invigorate student in-volvement, and influence their careerpath. It was considered high risk but,with the proper visibility, capable ofproducing high rewards.

Rutgers scientists attending theBaltic Sea conference viewed NOAA’strans-Atlantic challenge as an oppor-tunity to develop a new educationalprogram enabled by the gliders. Partic-ipation in high-risk ocean-scale gliderexpeditions would provide opportuni-ties for students to directly experiencethe many difficulties of operating atsea, the value of perseverance andteamwork, and the feeling of accom-plishment when successful. Studentswould experience the excitementof discovery through the analysis ofdata they helped collect from harshenvironment, and they would gain amore global cultural perspective bycommunicating with scientists andstudents from around the world.

This led Rutgers, Teledyne WebbResearch, and their international part-ners to conduct three long-durationglider missions in 2008–2009. Thefirst extended-duration mission ofthe series, glider RU15’s flight fromTuckerton, New Jersey to Halifax,Nova Scotia, crossed internationalborders and tested the new technolo-gies that would be required on futuretrans-Atlantic missions. Glider RU17’sfirst attempt at the Atlantic crossingstarted off the coast of New Jerseyand ended in what may have been abiologically induced leak offshore theAzores and the always heartbreakingloss of a glider at sea. One year later,glider RU27, a second trans-AtlanticSlocum glider christened ScarletKnight by U.S. IOOS, was launchedoff New Jersey. Visited by divers inthe Azores for a visual inspection, itwas freed of barnacles while still inthe water and continued traveling its7,400-km course. After spending221 days at sea, it was recovered inSpanish waters by the Puertos delEstado buoy tender Investigador, mak-ing it the first underwater robot to

January/February 2011 Volume 45 Number 1 53

cross an ocean basin. It now resides inthe Smithsonian’s National Museum ofNatural History. What was uniqueabout these three missions is thatthey were conducted with undergrad-uate students as part of their class-room experience, beginning in theconstruction phase, throughout thethree ocean journeys, and into thepost-mission data analysis phase, pro-viding a unique opportunity for par-ticipatory science learning.

This manuscript provides an over-view of the education programs devel-oped, how they were applied to thetrans-Atlantic missions, and the educa-tional lessons learned. It concludeswith a perspective on how this educa-tional effort provides the foundationfor an international partnership toexplore the world ocean on a secondNOAA challenge, a repeat of the1870 Challenger Mission, the first sci-entific circumnavigation of the globe.

New Approaches toUndergraduate Education

Rising Above the Gathering Stormnoted that while 30% of students en-tering U.S. colleges intend to major inscience and engineering; less than halfcomplete their bachelor’s degrees inthese subjects. Even qualified studentsgrow discouraged before reaching theworkforce. The report recommendsproviding undergraduate research ex-periences that extend beyond the class-room and across the summer as earlyas possible and emphasizes the needfor near-peer mentorship to augmentengaged faculty. Since the envisionedtrans-Atlantic glider mission wouldrequire a workforce for construction,prelaunch testing, and post-launchpath planning and data analysis withlimited support for technician time,student participation was necessary.

But how could the required long-termstudent involvement fit within an al-ready busy undergraduate schedule,and how would it help the studentsin their future job searches?

Our approach was informedthrough a needs assessment processfacilitated by the NSF Centers forOcean Sciences Education Excellence-Networked Ocean World (COSEE-NOW). The needs a s se s smentconfirmed that oceanographic grad-uate education programs are still look-ing for Ph.D. students with strongbasic science and math backgrounds,but it also revealed that federal agen-cies, companies, and even some uni-versity research laboratories are alsolooking for oceanographers withbachelor’s and master’s degrees. Otherrequirements include people to operatenew observing technologies, to runand interpret forecast models, and tocommunicate scientific information.The assessment indicated that gov-ernment agencies are willing to sup-port undergraduate internships as acost-effective way to both engage andevaluate students as potential newemployees, with opportunities for earn-ing of a master’s degree once hired.Support for certification of oceano-graphic professionals was found to begreatest at the bachelor’s degree level(Rosenfeld et al., 2009). Employ-ers are looking for individuals with across-disciplinary education (oceanog-raphy plus a minor), a range of tech-nical abilities that could adapt todifferent jobs, strong written and ver-bal communication skills, and hands-on real-worldworking-team experiences.An educational environment that de-veloped the student’s ability to workas part of a larger team was especiallywell received by companies. If a stu-dent receives a bad grade in a class,the bad grade can be hidden, since it

only affects the individual. But work-place activities are often team efforts,where the failure of one team memberpublicly impacts the entire team. Inaddition, federal agencies emphasizedthat the desired workforce should bemore diverse and more reflective ofthe U.S. general population. U.S. cen-sus bureau estimates for 2008 indicatethat the 22-year-old resident popula-tion is 62% White, non-Hispanic.NSF graduation statistics for 2008 in-dicate that the existing undergraduatemarine science pool is extremely small,with only 2,109 bachelor’s degreesawarded nationally (Figure 1). Inthese marine academic disciplines,82% of the bachelor’s degrees wereawarded to White, non-Hispanic stu-dents, and 59% were male.

In response to Rising Above theGathering Storm and guided by theCOSEE-NOW needs assessment, theNOAA trans-Atlantic glider challengehas become the catalyst for transform-ing our approach to undergraduateeducation in marine sciences. To movestudents beyond the marine scienceclassroom into a team project envi-ronment and to increase diversity, anundergraduate education programwas established based on the cognitiveapprenticeship model restated moresimply as “watch one, do one, teachone”. (See education break-out boxin Glenn and Schofield, 2009). Thethree phases start with the initial en-gagement, move on to team research,and culminate with veteran studentsin leadership roles mentoring the newstudents. Students from diverse disci-plines across the campus are engagedas early as their freshman year, withopportunities to continue with theprogram through graduation. Initialengagement occurs by (a) recruit-ing from several traditional 100-levelscience-distribution Introduction to

54 Marine Technology Society Journal

Oceanography lecture courses, towhich we have added (b) facultyparticipation in a university-wide seriesof one-credit freshman seminars wheresmall groups of 20 students are intro-duced to senior level faculty, (c) theestablishment of the OceanographyHouse as an on-campus living-and-learning community for incomingfreshmen with an interest in the ocean,and (d) through near-peer university-sponsored events and an active Ocean-ography Club where students alreadyinvolved discuss their involvementwith other Rutgers undergraduatesor with students back at their highschools.

At the middle level, while studentsare completing their usual contentcourses for their major/minor, a newteam research track that runs in parallelwith their coursework was developed.Undergraduate marine science de-grees, as do several other sciences atRutgers, require at least six credits ofresearch to graduate. To help studentsfulfill this requirement, the one-creditAtlantic Crossing research course wasestablished. The team-taught courseruns every semester, and as a research

course, students can sign up for it mul-tiple times, potentially taking it everysemester of their undergraduate ca-reer. The class typically is dividedinto small working teams of two tothree students. Team projects initiallyfocused on the glider rebuilds for longduration, the testing of new systems,and the development of path planningtools to understand the uncertaintyassociated with the constantly evolvingocean currents used as a roadmap. Theproduct at the end of each semester is aposter session by each working teamsimilar to those conducted at scienceconferences.

Finally, three capstone opportuni-ties are offered. First, as students be-come more experienced, they becometeam leaders, responsible for organiz-ing and reporting their team’s progressand acting as a mentor to younger stu-dents. Many students have found thelong-term progression from a rookieto a veteran team member an achiev-able goal and a confidence-buildingexperience. Second, the glider datasetsprovide senior thesis topics for thosewho want to expand their formal re-search skills through the prepara-

tion and defense of an honors thesis.Often senior theses begin throughsummer internships available afterthe student’s junior year. Third, theNSF-sponsored nationally coordinatedcourse Communicating Ocean Sciencesto Informal Audiences (COSIA) is of-fered for those desiring an introductionto learning theory with participatoryopportunities to develop their com-munication and teaching skills. InCOSIA, the gliders are a proven mag-net, providing a vehicle for engaging in-formal audiences outside the classroomin more interactive learning activities.

The above approach—needs as-sessment followed by implementationof a cognitive apprenticeship learningmodel—can be applied to develop awide variety of undergraduate educa-tion opportunities. It does not requirea fleet of gliders to implement.

Application to the Trans-Atlantic Glider Missions

Vehicle Construction. When thetrans-Atlantic challenge was issued,Rutgers had completed 66 glider mis-sions, ! being in shallow shelf waters

FIGURE 1

Distribution of the 2,109 U.S. bachelor’s degrees awarded in marine academic disciplines for 2008 by sex (A) and ethnicity (B). Source: NationalScience Foundation.

January/February 2011 Volume 45 Number 1 55

and" being in the surface layers of thedeep ocean. Mission durations dependon the number of sensors on board,the water depth of operations (deeperwater being more power efficient),and the amount of time spent commu-nicating. The longest mission in Mayof 2006 was 27 days. Since then,many deeper missions were completedwith standard alkaline battery packsand only Conductivity, Temperatureand Depth (CTD) sensors in the 30-to 40-day range, with a theoreticalvalue of 34 days. A trans-Atlanticmission would require an estimated300 days, a factor of 10 increase inmis-sion duration. This would not only re-quire more power but also ruggedizingmechanical systems for surviving thelonger durations at sea and protectionfrom corrosion and biofouling thatdo not normally plague a mission of1-month duration.

Students worked alongside Rutgerstechnicians in the laboratory to adaptgliders for long-duration missions.Some of these students were onwork-study plans with their pay al-ready supported as part of their finan-cial aid package. Others worked forhourly pay or for course credit. Thisphase was especially well suited for en-training engineering undergraduates.The students learned to take glidersapart, reassemble them with new testparts, reballast, and prepare them forlaunch. Software changes were testedon simulators. When class schedulespermitted, students would accompanytechnicians on the launch and recov-ery cruises. The required factor of 10increase in power was achieved byswitching from alkaline to lithium bat-teries that had four times the energy,building and test flying an extendedpayload bay that increased the numberof batteries from 230 C-cells to 453 C-cells and by reducing the daily aver-

age power usage from 2 to 1.5 Wby removing the altimeter, the pay-load bay computer, and loweringthe amount of data transferred overIridium. Corrosion protection wasmonitored and evaluated by studentsweighing all parts before and aftereach deployment. A variety of paintsand coatings were tested as studentprojects to limit biofouling.

Mission Planning Tools. A flightacross the Atlantic would require mis-sion planning capabilities well beyondthose available inMay of 2006. Rutgershad coordinated several month-longOffice of Naval Research (ONR)Coastal Predictive Skill Experimentsfrom a collaboratory located at a remotefield station (Glenn et al., 2000a,2000b; Glenn and Schofield, 2003)and recently completed a series ofNSF studies of the Hudson Riverplume with an on-campus collabora-tory (Chant et al., 2008). But thesestudies were relatively short in dura-tion compared with a trans-Atlanticmission that would require sustainedoperations for many months. Someof these capabilities were developedduring the ONR Shallow Water 2006Joint Experiment on the New Jerseyouter shelf (Tang et al., 2007). In thisexperiment, a distributed team of col-laborators was provided an onlinecoordination portal where scientistsposted environmental data updatesthat could be accessed over the In-ternet on shore or via HiSeasNet onboard the fleet of ships. The portal pro-vided a mission planning capability fora coordinated fleet of gliders and shipsby sharing daily updates of the envi-ronmental conditions.

The trans-Atlantic glider missionsrequired development of a similar col-laborative workspace to coordinate theactivities of a distributed team of scien-tists and students located on both sides

of the Atlantic and living in differenttime zones. The international teamwould require (1) common access tothe variety of datasets acquired andforecasts generated on both continents,(2) the ability to overlay the datasetsand forecasts in a common operationalenvironment to create new compos-ite analyses for mission planning, and(3) the ability to share our analyses, re-sults, and interpretations so flight deci-sions could be made. The collaborativeportal also had to be constructed andoperated with considerably fewer re-sources than were available to theShallowWater 2006 Joint Experiment.To accomplish this, the expertise ofCOSEE-NOW was again tapped toestablish an online learning commu-nity. The IOOS Mid-Atlantic regionwas chosen as our testbed, and ourstudents became the beta testers.

To accomplish the first task above,a collaborative Web portal was de-signed that access points to all existinganalyses products and programs couldbe posted and shared. Rather thanbuild a dedicated set of software toolsfor overlaying the wide variety of avail-able data and forecasts, Google Earthwas chosen as our mission planningtool for the second task. Many of therequired datasets (coastlines, bathyme-try, weather) were already in GoogleEarth, and new datasets could beadded relatively easily. The full capa-bilities provided by Google Earthwere used to overlay and compare spa-tial maps, to zoom and pan, to pull offlatitudes and longitudes, and to mea-sure distances and bearings. Majordata layers added to Google Earth in-clude global ocean forecasts, satellitemaps of sea surface height and the re-sulting geostrophic currents, satellite-derived sea surface temperature andocean color maps, and the glider trackswith depth-averaged currents. Students

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were quick to learn the many featuresof Google Earth and soon developedtheir ability to create their own analy-ses and interpretations. The third piecewas the ability to post the new analysesproducts along with an explanation inan open forum. A blog space was estab-lished using open-source software. Theblog was used not only as our ownmis-sion log but also as a means to share in-terpretations and comment on others.Students posted their weekly assign-ments to the blog and used the blogto discuss their results each week inclass. The blog evolved into the stu-dents’ textbook, written by the profes-sors and students themselves, andquality controlled through weeklydiscussions of the postings.

RU15—New Jersey to NovaScotia. Glider RU15’s test flight toHalifax was our first long-durationtest mission. It was run on a standardsize glider, one of the first equippedwith the new ruggedized tailfin de-signed for the Navy (Figure 2). ONRneeded long-term tests of the new fin,especially to determine if the shortertail would maintain communicationsduring storms. NOAA needed a testof lithium batteries on the coastalgliders to see if they could providethe additional energy for power hun-gry biological sensors. RU15,modifiedby Rutgers glider technicians and stu-dents to fly off of lithium batteries, wasdeployed on the New Jersey coast inMarch of 2008 (Figure 2A). It flewfor nearly 2 months on a track thattook it out on the Tuckerton Endur-ance line (Castelao et al., 2008) acrossthe shelf and slope and into the GulfStream. Weekly class activities in-cluded discussions of the best locationsand methodologies for crossing theheavily fished shelf break. Studentslearned the commands for flyingdeep below the fishing nets and aiming

for locations between the canyons thatwere focal points for fishing activity.Following the Gulf Stream down-stream and exiting about 62.5 W,RU15 headed for a newly formedwarm core ring for a boost of momen-tum to the north. In the process, stu-dents were introduced to the manysatellite products for locating the me-andering Gulf Stream, the ring for-mation, propagation and absorption

process, and the history of ocean fore-casting that developed from this region.Exiting the ring proved difficult, requir-ing a second lap around rather than aslow flight against the strong head cur-rent. Scientists and students learnedthe value of simple path planningtools to decide where to enter a ringand when to start leaving. After exitingthe warm core ring on the second lap,RU15 flew from small eddy to small

FIGURE 2

(A) Track for RU15 mission to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Significant wave height (C) and waveperiods (D) from a nearby NOAA weather buoy during a late winter/early spring storm (B) event.

January/February 2011 Volume 45 Number 1 57

eddy across the Slope Sea, flying backup onto the continental shelf near63 W and continuing east over themore wind-driven outer shelf until itreached the historic Halifax Line.From there, RU15 flew into shorewhere it was recovered by our colla-borators at Satlantic, Inc., offshoreHalifax Harbor. Along the way, RU15encountered a large winter storm withsignificant wave heights exceeding25 feet recorded by a nearby NOAAweather buoy (Figures 2B–2D). Evenduring the height of the storm, noIridium satellite communication callswere missed by the antenna in RU15’sshortened tail fin. But tests of the lith-ium batteries after recovery indicatedthat power was used faster than we ex-pected. Our estimate of battery poweravailable, the power draw of the vehi-cle, or both were in error.

RU17—New Jersey to the Azores(almost). With RU15’s recovery onApril 28, work on outfitting RU17proceeded in earnest. There was littletime to deal with the power uncer-tainty if we were to make the spring2008 launch window. RU17 waslaunched on May 21 from an offshorelocation on the outer shelf to savepower. RU17 would follow the samegeneral path as RU15, crossing theshelf break between seafloor canyonsto avoid the fishing activity. But get-ting into the Gulf Stream presentedproblems. There were no warm corerings to catch, and RU27 was on thewestern side of a Gulf Stream meandercrest. It was shedding shingles of warmwater that RU17 had to fly against,requiring a full month to get into theGulf Stream. But the Gulf Streamwas relatively straight that spring, andRU17 quickly flew down its lengthpast the Grand Banks of Newfound-land (Figure 3A). The first third ofthe mission, New Jersey to the Grand

Banks, was accomplished during thespring semester with a seasoned crewof students repeating what theyhad just learned from the RU15 testdeployment.

The next task, passed from theAtlantic Crossing class onto our sum-mer student interns in the NSF Re-search Internships in Ocean Sciences(RIOS) program, was to cover themiddle third of the mission, flyingRU17 from the Grand Banks to theAzores. After passing the GrandBanks, the Gulf Stream splits and fila-ments, taking several routes east. Theregion is characterized by an ener-getic mesoscale eddy field, with eddiesthat can speed the glider’s progresseast or totally halt it, sending it backwest. This is precisely what occurredat 45 W where RU17 encountered astrong eddy that stopped eastwardprogress. Summer students runningsimulations with virtual gliders flyingthrough the Navy’s model forecastcurrents determined that our only al-ternative was to backtrack with thecurrent to the west, then turn northto a zone of more favorable currentsmuch farther north. The 5° of latitudeexcursion, with path decisions in-formed through model simulations,required a full month to complete.RU17 then turned east until about38 W. During this segment of theflight, engineering students monitor-ing the flight parameters noted thatthe biological interactions intensi-fied. Three types of interactions werediscovered. One was a behavior thatslowed down the glider’s verticalmotion during the night, and thenlet it speed up again during the day(Figure 3B). A second behavior in-cluded times that the glider’s upwardmotion would nearly or completelystop (Figure 3C). Similar behav-iors had been observed in the Gulf

of Mexico when negatively buoyantRemora attach to a glider and holdthe vehicle down until it triggers anemergency ascent. The third behaviorstudent engineers discovered was thespinning of the glider caused by dragon one side. Hypothesizing that some-thingmay have been snagged by one ofthe wings, technicians and studentsdeveloped a procedure to fly back-wards that they tested on simulators.By deflating the tail floatation bag,pulling the pitch battery all the wayback to lower the tail as if it is ascend-ing and simultaneously pulling thepump in to reduce the volume, theglider sinks tail first, flying backwards.Repeated attempts could not clearwhatever was causing the drag, andthe spinning persisted. Over time,the engineers noted that the spinningwas tied to the cycle of the moon.The spinning was worse during thenew moon, when the biologists sus-pected that bioluminescence madethe glider one of the brightest objectsin the region. During the full moon,the spinning would cease, and theglider was able to fly a steady courseagain. Given this, our plan was to con-serve power and use flight time duringthe new moon to reach the Azores sothat an observation vessel could belaunched for a visit.

That plan changed suddenly onOctober 26, when just before mid-night GMT, RU17 scrambled to thesurface to report a leak. Leak detectionsensors are located in the nose and thetail of each glider. If even a drop ofwater crosses the leak sensor, a voltagedrop is detected and the glider does anemergency ascent. We had seen leakdetects with small voltage drops ingliders before, and upon recovery, afailure in an O-ring was detected byvisual inspection. This leak detectwas different, with an immediate and

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FIGURE 3

(A) Track of RU17 on the flight towards the Azores. (B) Average duration of full excursion dives (bottom line) and climbs (top line) showing the day-nightvariation in climb performance. (C) Sample segment showing normal climbs (100–2 m) and numerous aborted climbs during the local night.(D) Time series of leak detect voltage (red) from the time of the last dive (black dots) on October 27 until the loss of communications on October 28,2008. Yellow bars show the range of leak detect voltages in laboratory tests for water touching the leak detect sensor (top) to full immersion (bottom).

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much larger voltage drop than we hadever seen. From the engineering data,the leak detect was triggered as RU17was ascending toward the surface at adepth of about 50 m. The large voltagedrop on the leak detect indicated thatthis was unlikely to be a similar O-ringfailure. If it was corrosion, it is ex-pected that the hole would breakopen on the way down as the pressurewas increasing, not on the way up aspressure was decreasing. A leak in theair bladder would also result in a signif-icant change in the vacuum inside thepressure hull. There was no change invacuum, and an air bladder leak wouldbe expected to occur at the surfacewhen the bladder is being inflated,not at depth. Moving to the front,the seams on the movable piston onthe buoyancy pump are a possibility,but the design cycles had not been ex-ceeded, and a piston leak would be ex-pected when it is moving at the top orbottom inflection points, not in themiddle of a glide. We concluded thatthe most likely location for a leak ofthis size that could not be ruled outby the engineering data would be as-sociated with the hull fittings of theCTD. In deployments off Hawaii, wehave seen the CTDs damaged by bigfish, including sharks, that can bendthe sensor by bumping into it, presum-ably while they are chasing smallerpreys that use the glider for cover.

RU17 remained at the surface for2 days, transmitting its position andengineering data. While preparationswere being made for recovery, theleak detect voltage continued to drop(Figure 3D). Students measured thereaction of the leak detect sensors todifferent amounts of seawater in thelaboratory, discovering that the leakdetect voltage was already suggestingthat the sensors were fully submergedin seawater. Finally, on October 28,

we received the last transmission fromRU17. The flight of RU17 resultedin the loss glider and heartbreak butalso the accumulation of significantknowledge on the long-duration flightrequirements for shallow gliders. It re-minded everyone of the risk.

RU27—New Jersey to Spain.Lessons learned from the flight ofRU17 were used to inform the con-struction a second long-duration gliderwith an education mission. RU27 wasconstructed with an extended payloadbay by Teledyne Webb Research as anew product, and as with RU17, thealtimeter and payload bay computerwere removed. The 100-m buoyancypump used in RU17 was replacedwith a 200-m pump based on thesuccessful repeated deployments byOregon State University. New pinsupports strengthened the CTD. The435 lithium C-cells on RU17 grew to453 plus 15 reserve on RU27 by space-saving rearrangements of the inter-nal electronics (Table 1). A Coulombmeter was developed and installed tomeasure how much energy was beingdrawn from the batteries. Hull sec-tions and the tail cone were coatedwith the light rubberized ClearSignal(Lobe et al., 2010) to minimize theneed for heavy ablative antifoulingpaints. Students were involved withall aspects of the build and conducted

a test flight from February 18 toMarch13, 2009, across the shelfbreak todeepwater to tune the steering andestablish the power usage.

RU27 was christened the ScarletKnight by IOOS on March 23, 2009.Placed inside the hull was a NOAAcoin, a USB memory stick containingover 100 letters from school childrento be printed in Spain and sent backupon arrival, and paper copies of theletters congratulating partners onboth sides of the Atlantic, just in casethe mission was successful. The ScarletKnightwas launchedoffshoreTuckerton,New Jersey, onApril 27, 2009, 10 yearsafter the first Slocum glider was flownat sea in the same location by DougWebb and a Rutgers student and20 years after the publication of TheSlocum Mission (Stommel, 1989).

Continuous monitoring of the flightwas coordinated by professors (S.Glenn,O. Schofield, and J. Kohut) workingwith teams of undergraduate studentsin the Rutgers Atlantic Crossing re-search course during the spring andfall semesters and with teams of under-graduate interns participating in thepilot for the Summer Research Insti-tute sponsored by the DHS Center ofExcellence for Port Security betweensemesters. Typically, 10 teams of twoto three students were working in par-allel on different aspects of themission,

TABLE 1

Battery pack comparison for a standard alkaline-powered coastal glider and the RU27 lithium-powered trans-Atlantic glider (not including 15 batteries reserved for emergency power).

Number ofC-Cells

EnergyperC-Cell

Daily AveragePower Use

TheoreticalDuration

Cost perC-Cell

TotalBatteryCost

AlkalineSlocum

230 21.6 kJ 2 W 34 days $5.22 $1,200

RU27 453 88.5 kJ 1.5 W 371 days $50.60 $22,922

Factor 1.9 4.1 1.33 10.9 9.7 19.1

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from watching the weather for windsand waves, validating the ocean cur-rent models, monitoring the gliderflight performance and its ability tocommunicate, analyzing the gliderdata, definition of a safe landingzone, and logistics for recovery. Thestudents blogged their results andmet weekly as a group to discus newinformation and define strategies forthe next week.

The flight track of RU27 across theAtlantic is shown in Figure 4, wherethe flight blog highlights labeled by

number in the figure are described inTable 2. By May 2, RU27 had com-pleted the dangerous trip across thecontinental shelf, where it encoun-tered fishing fleets and shallow waterwithout an altimeter. From there, theglider would be in deepwater, where itwould remain for the rest of the mis-sion. By May 7, RU27 had made itinto the Gulf Stream. The strategywas different from before, with RU27instead approaching an eastward prop-agating Gulf Stream meander fromthe downstream side. As the meander

crest propagated forward, RU27 wasentrained after only 10 days at sea anda full 10 days ahead of the projectedschedule. With May being one of thehistorically best months for viewingsatellite sea surface temperature (SST)images of the Gulf Stream, RU27 eas-ily traversed the Gulf Stream’s entirelength in less than a month, withonly a short delay caused by a quickencounter with a cold core ring nearMay 23. The first half of June wasspent circling around the southernside of a large cyclonic eddy that

FIGURE 4

Trans-Atlantic track of RU27 marking the location of 16 significant events in the flight. Insets: (2) RU27 leaves the shallow water and fishingactivity of the Mid-Atlantic Bight continental shelf; (3) RU27 navigates the meandering warm jet of the Gulf Stream flowing from Cape Hatteras tothe Grand Banks; (6) RU27, after encountering a strong head-current, flies around the southern side of a large cyclonic cold-eddy; (8) RU27approaches the Phantom Eddy in the HyCOM forecast, an artifact generated by the data assimilation scheme; (10) Hurricane Bill leaves theU.S. East Coast and turns east toward RU27; (16) RU27 is approached by the Spanish R/V Investigador for recovery (photo by diver Dan Crowell).

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seemed to be parked just to the east ofthe Grand Banks. The rest of June andJuly was spent navigating the NorthAtlantic mesoscale eddy field, flyingfrom eddy to eddy based on guidancefrom satellite altimeters and oceanf o r e c a s t mod e l s . I t w a s du r -ing July that RU27 focused attentionon the largest forecast model errorencountered on the trip, a mesoscaleanticyclonic circulation that cameto be known as the Phantom Eddygenerated through the incorrect treat-ment of the combined drifter and sat-ellite altimetry ingested by the dataassimilation component of the fore-cast system.

In August, RU27 entered theEuropean waters surrounding theAzores. This is where steering pro-blems attributed to an unknown bio-logical interaction began. At times,RU27 would fly straight, and atother times, it would spin in a tight cir-cle, with no apparent day-night ormoon phase cycling as observed forRU17. On August 25, Hurricane Billpassed to the north of RU27, leavinglarge waves in its wake. As Bill dissi-pated over the United Kingdom, aglider team left the Azores on the sail-boat Nevertheless to document thecause of the steering problems. OnAugust 27, the glider team rendez-voused with RU27, discovering thatbarnacles had attached themselves tothe narrow uncoated seams betweenthe five glider hull sections, formingfour rings of barnacles that circled theglider. The barnacles could fan out orretract, creating significant and vari-able drag on RU27. The unevengrowth resulted in uneven drag andsteering offsets. The barnacles werephotographically documented andthen removed by hand by divers,while RU27 remained in the water.

TABLE 2

RU27 Blog Highlights from 2009.

No. Date Event Description

1 Apr 27 Deployed from Tuckerton, NJ.

2 May 2 Leave the continental shelf and enter deepwater where it will remain forthe entire deployment. Successfully made it through the fishing activityand did not collide with the bottom without an altimeter. First look atthe deepwater power usage.

3 May 7 Into the Gulf Stream. Only 10 days at sea and already 10 days aheadof schedule.

4 May 23 Spun out of the southern side of the Gulf Stream and into a cold eddy.Turn north to fly back into the Stream.

5 Jun 5 Leave the Gulf Stream region, passing south of the Grand Banks ofNewfoundland. Encounter a head current along the northern side ofthe largest cold eddy of the trip, requiring RU27 to loop around itssouthern side.

6 Jun 18 Finally pull out of the cold eddy on its eastern side, just before beingswept around for a second loop.

7 Jun 29 Break through a countercurrent after a week-long struggle to flyjust 125 km. This was RU27’s first persistent countercurrent notassociated with a strong eddy structure.

8 Jul 19 After navigating the eddy field with excellent ocean forecasts, RU27encounters a forecast eddy that is clearly incorrect. RU27 focuses ourattention on a series of sensitivity studies as to why this anticyclonicwarm eddy incorrectly appears in the forecast.

9 Aug 2 Enter European waters for the first time. These are the Portuguesewaters surrounding the Azores. The steering difficulties attributed toan unknown biological interaction begin.

10 Aug 25 Hurricane Bill passes to the north, generating large waves. The gliderteam prepares to depart the Azores on the sailboat Nevertheless.

11 Aug 28 Glider team completes its mission to document the biological activityon RU27, clean off the barnacles they found, and let it resume itsmission without taking the glider out of the water.

12 Sep 8 RU27 breaks the along-track distance record of 5,700 km set byRU17 in 2008.

13 Oct 12 RU27 hits the half-power point on the theoretical power curve.

14 Oct 22 RU27 breaks free of the second persistent countercurrent. Like thefirst encounter, a full week of careful navigation was required.

15 Nov 14 RU27 crosses into European waters for the second time. This timeit crosses into Spanish waters off of the Spanish mainland.

16 Dec 4 Recovery aboard the Spanish Research Vessel Investigador. RU27exactly on target. Just north of the maritime border between Spainand Portugal and just west of the 12 W line, safe from the shippingtraffic and fishing activity.

17 Dec 11 Landfall in Baiona, Spain

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Once cleaned and flight character-istics were verified, RU27 resumed itsmission to fly east the next day onAugust 28. September and Octobercontinued the process of navigatingthe North Atlantic eddy field basedon satellite altimetry and forecastmodel guidance. On November 14,RU27 crossed into European waterssurrounding the coast of Spain andPortugal. Inspired by discussionswith their student collaborators in theAzores andCanaries, the undergraduateschose Baiona, Spain, for RU27’s po-tential landfall because of its historicalsignificance. Baiona is the Spanish portwhere the caravel Pinta, the fastestof Columbus’ three ships (the first tosight the New World and the first toreturn to Europe in 1493), made land-fall. RU27 proceeded to the chosenpick-up point, a safe spot just northof the maritime Spanish-Portugueseborder and just west of the high trafficnorth-south shipping lanes. It was re-covered by Puertos del Estado usingthe R/V Investigador on December 4,2009, the first underwater glider tobe deployed on the western side ofthe Atlantic and recovered on the east-ern side. The trans-Atlantic flight ofRU27 required 221 days to cover the7,400 km along-track distance, com-pleting over 22,000 undulations andmaking over 1,000 satellite phonecalls to report data and receive newcommands. Total power used was7,750 Wh, equivalent to a 100-Wlight bulb turned on for 77.5 h orjust under 3.25 days.

On December 9, 2009, still aboardthe recovery vessel R/V Investigador,RU27 made landfall in Baiona. Itwas here in Baiona that Spain’s Minis-ter of Development officially returnedRU27 to the U.S. delegation, leadby representatives of the U.S. WhiteHouseOffice of Science andTechnology

Policy, NOAA, and Rutgers. A con-gratulatory video from the U.S. Secre-tary of Commerce was played, and theMayor of Baiona unveiled a new RU27plaque permanently placed on the sea-wall next to the plaque commemorat-ing the voyage and crew of the Pinta.

Over 25 multiauthored student re-search posters were constructed fromthe flight and presented at researchmeetings, including one summary stu-dent poster representing the entireteam that was presented at the 2010Ocean Sciences meeting. The Deanof Undergraduate Education spon-sored events for the students to telltheir stories and inspire other under-graduates to get involved. Our classsize doubled each semester, from 3 to7, to 13, to 26 over the 2 years coveringthe flights of RU17 and RU27, leveledoff near its present range of 50–60.The opportunity for undergraduatestudents to gain hands-on experiencewith the latest technology, to takerisks with a robot at sea while remain-ing in a safe on-shore environment,and to experience the internationalcollaborative teamwork required tosuccessfully complete this mission arereasons cited by the students in theirown recruiting video.

In addition to oceanography classes,the trans-Atlantic flight was used asthe subject of a documentary filmed,edited, and produced by a collaborat-ing English professor (D. Seidel) andher undergraduate students in a seriesof English courses, including Docu-mentary Filmmaking and Digital Story-telling. The documentary AtlanticCrossing: A Robot’s Daring Journey hasnow won eight film festival awards.English students in the class not onlylearned documentary film makingbut also learned about ocean scienceby working alongside oceanographyundergraduates for 1.5 years. RU27

also was the inspirational centerpiecefor the Communicating Ocean Sciencescourse ( J. McDonnell) in the springof 2009, using climate change as thescience theme and gliders as the newenabling technology. Undergraduatedesigned and tested hands-on glideractivities designed to demonstratenew technologies for monitoring cli-mate change at informal educationinstitutions are now in place at NewJersey’s Liberty Science Center as apermanent docent-led activity andhave also been demonstrated by stu-dents on the floor of the SmithsonianNational Museum of Natural History.

RU27—Post-Flight Data Analy-sis. The datasets collected by RU27were analyzed by a team of summerstudent interns in the 2010 NSF RIOSprogram. The three-person under-graduate team consisted of a physicsmajor, a biology major, and an engi-neering major. The interdisciplinaryteam results on heat transport calcu-lated from RU27 and compared withthe Navy forecast model used in thecrossing is shown in Figure 5. ForRU27, temperature (Figure 5A) andthe northward depth-averaged velocity(Figure 5B) were combined to providea proxy for heat transport (Figure 5C).The same variables generated from anocean numerical model (the Navy’sHybrid Coordinate Ocean Model,HyCOM) are plotted in Figures 5D–5F.

Starting on the Mid-Atlantic Bightshelf in late April and continuing intoearly May as RU27 crossed the SlopeSea, temperatures in the glider dataand the model are cold, around 11°C.Currents are generally slow to thesouth for both glider and model.From May 7 through June 5, RU27navigated the warm water of the GulfStream. The glider data indicates, asexpected, that the warm water of theGulf Stream is above 18°C in the

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upper 200 m along the entire length ofthe Gulf Stream. Temperature differ-ences between the model and data inthis region, specifically the cold bandsbelow 100 m, are due to imperfectforecasts of the Gulf Stream position.The banding in the north-south veloc-ity time series is apparent in both theglider data and the model. Both havea strong band of northward velocity(red) as RU27 moves north with theGulf Stream near 64 W, both exhibitsouthward velocity (blue) as RU27 trav-els the length of the Gulf Stream from64 to 55 W, and both turn to positivenorthward velocities as RU27 turnsnorth with the Gulf Stream on May23 near 54 W. Small differences be-tween the model and the data can beattributed to incorrect placement ofthe Gulf Stream in the model, butthe general trends are reproduced.Most strikingly, the depth average cur-rent returned by RU27 is not that dif-ferent in structure from the actualcurrent profile in the model. This is im-portant, since the resulting heat trans-port is dominated by the variability inthe currents. In this region, the water isnearly uniformly warm in the upper

200 m, and the heat transport dependson the proper location of the GulfStream meander crests and troughs.

Leaving the Gulf Stream region onJune 5, RU27 encounters a stronganti-cyclonic eddy on the southeastside of the Grand Banks. The warmwater above 18°C is shallower than50 m in both the glider data and themodel. North-south currents in bothabruptly switch from southward(blue) to northward (red) as the south-ern side of the cold eddy is crossed, re-maining in place until mid-June whenRU27 breaks free of this eddy andheads east. As in the Gulf Stream, thecurrents dominated heat transport inthe eddy, and therefore, the locationof this eddy in the forecast is critical.For the next month and a half, RU27navigated the North Atlantic eddyfield. On July 29, RU27 encountersthe largest forecast error observed inthe model. During this time, thewarmest waters above 18°C are ob-served and forecast to be in the upper40m of the temperature field. Less var-iability is observed in the glider datathan the model, which might indicatethat the model may be overestimating

the intensity of eddies and their im-pact on the surface layer temperaturefield. Currents in both the model andthe data show alternating bands of± 20 cm/s north-south currents, de-pending on the side of the eddy. Calcu-lating the correct heat transport frommodel results becomes a challenge forplacing the eddies in the proper lo-cations. At the beginning of August,RU27 turns southeast towards Portu-guese waters, and a warming trend isobserved in the upper 30 m of thedata and the model. This warming isabruptly halted by the passage of Hur-ricane Bill on August 25 and the result-ing mixing in both the model and thedata. Continuing east from the Azores,the process of flying eddy to eddy con-tinues as the magnitude of the varia-bility in the eddy currents remainingrelatively constant, with only occasionalcurrents exceeding 20 cm/s in thenorth or south direction. The surfacelayer of the ocean is observed to coolas winter approaches. Water less than14°C rises above the 100 m depth.By December, the water column isnearly uniformly cool near 14°C.Heat transport is small compared

FIGURE 5

Comparison of measured (Glider RU27; A, B, C) and modeled (HyCOM; D, E, F) trans-Atlantic cross sections of temperature (A, D), north-southcomponent of the current (B, E) and north-south component of the heat transport (C, F) along the track shown in Figure 4.

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with the western side of the basin ear-lier in the year.

Evolving the UndergraduateEducation Experience—Lessons Learned

Traditional university marine sci-ence programs are often structuredaround a classical model of classroomlearning in the first 2–3 years, afterwhich a small minority of the studentsgain field experience by working in re-search laboratories and gaining prizedaccess to research cruises. This hasbeen an effective model for develop-ing future Ph.D. students over thelast 50 years. Given the challenges fac-ing society today, there is a greaterneed for science education than onlygrooming future Ph.D. students. It iscritical that the undergraduate experi-ence expands ocean literacy across allof the sciences and humanities. Thisis especially important since the ob-served changes occurring throughoutthe world’s ocean will have profoundeconomic, cultural, and security con-sequences. Based on our experience,oceanography provides a level of ad-venture that is a vehicle to inspire stu-dents to begin and continue pursuingdegrees in science and engineer-ing. Given our positive experience ofentraining undergraduates into thesciences via ocean exploration, we be-lieve it provides a blueprint for rede-signing the undergraduate educationcurriculum. In fact, it is now being re-applied at Rutgers with a larger andeven more distributed group to engagestudents in environmental sciences is-sues associated with the Raritan Riverand Estuary. The Raritan Initiativeutilizes Rutgers location on the banksof the Raritan River to involve studentsfrom across campuses in interdisciplin-

ary studies that use the river and estu-ary as a natural laboratory. The naturalenvironment provides motivation, andthe co-location provides access. Thecourse work includes freshman yearseminars to entrain students, an inter-disciplinary team taught sophomoreyear field course, and the support ofsenior thesis studies involving datafrom the Raritan.

The new approach has severalcharacteristics that are important:

It is critical to engage students as earlyas their freshmen year in research.The Web-based nature of oceanobservatories allows students totake part with ongoing experi-ments, which lets them live the ex-citement of doing research. Theyexperience the uncertainty, adven-ture, and creativity required to con-duct an experiment, which providesan effective counterbalance to class-room learning that often portraysscience as a very linear process. Tak-ing part in the ocean experiments,they experience the numerousstumbling blocks, such as the lossof RU17 after months of work.These hurdles, while emotionallydraining, generally engage studentsto see the adventure through untilthe end. Many of the studentswho joined the Atlantic crossing ef-fort of RU17 were freshmen andsophomores. The RU17 attempt,failure, engineering analysis, con-struction of RU27, and eventuallysuccessful Atlantic crossing was a3-year process. For the students toexperience the full adventure, theyneed to be engaged early in theiracademic career to realize the fruitsof their labor. Designing strategiesto entrain the students as theyenter the university is critical.Thisrealization led us to establish

Oceanography House as a dedi-cated freshman dormitory forstudents interested in the oceans re-gardless of their major. The livingand learning community is adver-tised during the university openhouse for incoming students andprovides them with a direct link tomarine science from their first dayon campus. Undergraduates in-volved in the observatory workalso visit their high schools toprovide science talks and act as am-bassadors. The students of Ocean-ography House meet weekly withprofessors and upper class studentsto focus ongoing scientific efforts.Developing a near-peer communityis important for expanding diversity.A critical component to the ocean-ography living learning commu-nity is that incoming students areprovided guidance by upper classadvanced oceanography students.These oceanography mentors pro-vide assistance in transitioning thefreshmen into the ocean explora-tion classes. This is critical as thestudents entering the classes asfreshmen have a wide range of ex-pertise, represent a wide rangeof disciplinary interests spanningfrom oceanography to English,and mirror the ethnic and culturaldiversity of the Rutgers studentbody, one of the most diverse re-search universities in the U.S. Forthe upperclassmen, they are put ina position of mentorship that re-quires them to understand key con-cepts with sufficient detail to keepthe new students on track, provid-ing teaching experience. Manyof the students who do not pursuegraduate school often become sci-ence teachers. This is particularlyimportant since there is a critical

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need to improve science educationat the K-12 education level. To as-sist in this process, the students areprovided the COSIA opportu-nity for developing the skills re-quired to be an inspirational scienceteacher by providing a firm foun-dation in communication tech-niques and pedagogy.Allow the students to work as teams.Given the goal of increasing the di-versity of disciplines, the teacher isoften confronted with a wide rangeof student skills/science knowledge.To help address these gaps andto facilitate the near-peer relation-ships, student are often given spe-cific projects as a team of three tofour students. The team consistsof at least one advanced upperclass-men. Teams are coordinated in asystems engineering model, whereinitially individual projects are iter-ated over a period for a few monthsand then the individual parts arecombined to provide an overall sys-tem to help coordinate glider ac-tivities. For example, during theRU27 journey, the undergraduateteams focused on a successful re-covery off the coast of Spain. Theteams documented the major ship-ping lanes, provided weather andwave forecasts, provided logisticalplanning for the ship crew, and re-searched the history of the Spanishport cities to help a develop a RU27recovery plan.Give students intuitive tools to ana-lyze data and make their own discov-eries.The analysis of the RU27 dataand comparisons to ocean forecastsby undergraduate summer internswas enabled by a new toolkit of in-teractive glider software developedspecifically for education. As stu-dents gain experience with programlanguages and complex file formats,

they could do these same analyseson their own. But developing aworking knowledge of these soft-ware skills is a barrier to many stu-dents. Simple intuitive interfaces,such as Google Earth, were usedby students at any level to visualizeand compare datasets, allowingthem to draw their own conclu-sions. The glider data analysis inter-faces developed here and tested bythe undergraduates in the 2010NSF RIOS program enabled thestudents to visualize and interpretvertical glider data as easily as theydid with the horizontal data inGoogle Earth. The result of thesoftware test was three research pos-ters, one on the heat transport ofRU27 discussed above, a secondon the flight characteristics of anew Slocum Thermal Glider, anda third on optimizing the flightprofiles for heat transport calcu-lations along 26.5 N, a standardtrans-Atlantic sampling line formonitoring the maximum in thenorth-south heat transport causedby the Meridional OverturningCirculation.

A Future Vision—TheChallenger Mission anda Global Classroom

In Baiona, Spain, Rick Spinrad re-flected on his initial 2006 challenge tomodify one of our gliders and fly itacross the Atlantic.With this challengecomplete, Dr. Spinrad issued a secondchallenge, to send an internationallycoordinated fleet of gliders on a cir-cumnavigation that revisited the trackof the HMS Challenger. The originalChallenger mission (Cornfield, 2003)was the first dedicated scientific cir-cumnavigation of the globe. It took3.5 years, leaving England in Decem-

ber 1872, returning in May 1876, andtraversing 111,000 km, exactly 15 timesthe distance covered by RU27.

As with the trans-Atlantic glidermission, a circumnavigation willrequire the development of new tech-nologies, and it will require the devel-opment of new international teams.The range of technologies potentiallyincludes not only the full suite of elec-tric gliders available to the interna-tional community from both the U.S.and China but also the Slocum Ther-mal Glider, part of the original visionof Doug Webb and Hank Stommel.The fleet will likely include a mix ofgliders or even hybrids of the thermaland lithium battery technology. Ourown experience has shown that flexi-bility in glider design is again a desiredtrait. Thermal gliders work best whenthere is a large temperature differencebetween the surface and the bottomof the undulation, typically about15°C. Winter and summer forecastsfrom the HyCOM model indicatethat thermal gliders can be tuned tocover much of the subtropical oceanbasins and the tropics. Our own stu-dent calculations have demonstratedthat in some cases, for example, the cal-culation of heat transport in the sub-tropical ocean basins, that flying tothe deepest allowable depth on everyundulation may not be the optimaldive profile. Again, flexibility in themix of dive profiles is going to be de-sired, with deep profiles interspersedwith shallow.

As with the trans-Atlantic mission,the Challenger Mission will requirenew technologies, but it will also re-quire people. We have found thatmany of those people already exist—they are already in our classrooms.Our students have already developeda prospectus and approach for theChallenger Mission, starting with an

66 Marine Technology Society Journal

expansion from the North Atlanticto the South Atlantic, followed by acircling of the globe. Moving to theSouth Atlantic and eventually theglobe will require a transformationfrom a Rutgers classroom to a globallydistributed classroom, facilitated byon-line virtual learning communities,entraining an even more diverse rangeof partners and disciplines, and provid-ing an even broader global perspectiveto the generation that must deal withclimate change over their lifetimes.We hope that the perspectives gainedthrough the local Atlantic Crossingcourse and the envisioned global Chal-lenger Mission course will provide ourstudents with the scientific perspectiveand the global cultural experience tomeet the challenges of their generation.

AcknowledgmentsSlocum gliders were developed

through the vision and support of theOffice of Naval Research, transition-ing from an engineering demonstra-tion on its first deployment at sea, toa research tool used by many federalagencies, to an operational Navalasset in less than a decade. NOAA pro-vided the challenge for the first trans-Atlantic missions. Rutgers alumni,Teledyne Webb Research, NOAA,and U.S. IOOS provided support forthe build and the launch. Educationalsupport was provided by the NationalScience Foundation and the Depart-ment ofHomeland Security. Our part-ners in Spain at Puertos del Estado andUniversidad de Las Palmas de GranCanaria provided support for the re-covery. These and future missionswould not be possible without the di-rect participation and continuing in-terest of the Atlantic Crossing studentsand their international collaborators.

Lead Author:Scott GlennCoastal Ocean Observation Laboratory,Institute of Marine and CoastalSciences, School of Environmentaland Biological Sciences,Rutgers University71 Dudley Road, New Brunswick,NJ 08901, USAEmail: glenn@marine.rutgers.edu

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United States Integrated Ocean Observing System: Our Eyes on Our Oceans, Coasts and Great Lakes: Part II