Symposium on Marine Renewable Energy

Here's an interesting event taking place on campus this week (that I just found out about) - the 7th Marine Law Symposium on Thursday and Friday, Oct. 23 and 24, will focus on developing a framework for off-shore renewable energy.

This month, developing that framework will be the focal point when domestic and international scientists, business leaders and policymakers – including U.S. Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island Gov. Donald Carcieri and a host of others – converge at Roger Williams University on Oct. 23-24 to find real-world solutions for tackling the legal, economic and policy challenges of the nascent marine renewable energy industry.

At the law school’s 7th Marine Law Symposium, this cross-disciplinary gathering of experts will grapple with the “how” of developing offshore energy resources, addressing concrete ways to support the burgeoning marine renewable energy business market, while attempting to reconcile a tangle of local, state, federal and public interest needs related to the protection, conservation and management of valuable marine resources.

Although registration for the event is closed, it is going to be streamed live at mms://streamer.rwu.edu/marinelaw and apparently there is going to be some live blogging of the event.

Perhaps I'm not in the loop as much as I would like to be, but I'm amazed that I didn't hear about this event until today. In fact, the only reason I heard of it at all is because an email went out to everyone concerning the parking ban in effect for the event! In any case, this is an important topic, especially for coastal areas, so hopefully something good comes of the symposium.

"...set an open course for the virgin sea"

2008 - 2009 ANNOUNCEMENT SEA is now accepting applications for the 2008-2009 academic year. Sea Education Association now offers three unique opportunities for undergraduates to spend a semester studying the oceans in the world-renown oceanographic community of Woods Hole, MA and aboard one of our modern sailing research vessels during an oceanic passage in the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean. SEA Semester: Ocean Exploration - This long-standing, innovative program offers students of all majors a multidisciplinary approach to studying the world's oceans from scientific, maritime cultural, and modern seafaring perspectives. Celestial navigation, meteorology, seamanship, oceanographic sampling techniques and research, and maritime history, literature and policy comprise the core curriculum. SEA Semester: Documenting Change in the Caribbean - Humanities, Environmental Studies, Geography and Social Sciences students are prepared for an extraordinary project-based academic experience. Few regions have seen such enormous changes in the last five centuries as the islands in the Caribbean Sea. Today, there is a dynamic mix of cultures and biota in the islands that bears little resemblance to the world encountered by Christopher Columbus. Students explore how we can document these changes using maps and charts, historical documents, commercial records, harbor pilots, species surveys, and the literature of Caribbean people from both the Colonial and post-Colonial periods. SEA Semester: Oceans & Climate - For advanced science students. This program focuses on the importance of the equatorial Pacific to the global carbon cycle, and culminates in a trans-equatorial research cruise from either Mexico to Tahiti or Tahiti to Hawaii. SEA faculty and visiting researchers from across the country engage students in oceanography, ocean policy and the operation a sailing research vessel. www.sea.edu

Selachophobia

Seems like the perfect time for this. First, it's almost Shark Week. Second, there are sharks in Boston and now also on Nantucket.

I grew up in Massachusetts. I spent my summers at the beach on Cape Cod. I have studied the ocean and its critters. I love the ocean and its critters (yes, even molluscs). I think sharks are incredibly cool. I know that people are far more likely to die in a car accident than by being attacked by a shark. But still, every time I go in the water or take my kids to the beach I can't help but think of Jaws. EVERY time. Now, it doesn't stop me (normally) from going in the water or letting my kids have fun splashing around and throwing seaweed at each other, but there it is, always in the back of my mind, tickling my amygdala. Don't get too deep, kids. OK, that's far enough. Maybe we should build a sandcastle now.. My wife likes to tell a story about a time when we went swimming near dusk and I kept getting more and more anxious, refusing to go any deeper - she used to think it was silly until she heard about great whites being reported off Cape Cod. Part of me thinks it's silly too, but a bigger part of me likes all my limbs, thank you very much.

Irrational? Yup. But not terribly surprising either - being attacked by a shark seems to fit all four types of things we fear:

1. We fear what our ancestral history has prepared us to fear. As a survival tactic, fear of being eaten has served us well.


2. We fear what we can’t control. I don't care if you're Michael Phelps, you ain't in control. I'd feel more in control being attacked by a grizzly bear.


3. We fear things that are immediate more than the long-term. Sharks don't nibble.


4. We fear threats readily available in memory. Thanks for nothing, Mr. Spielberg.

So, as much as I enjoyed Jaws, and all its memorable quotes ("You're gonna need a bigger boat"), I think I'd rather my kids never see it.

Oh ye! who have your eye-balls vexed and tired, Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;

Sea Education Association's SEA Semester is a program that I fully support and am happy to promote. Beyond a top-notch, hands-on education in marine science, I learned more about leadership, teamwork and self-confidence while working and living on one of their sailing vessels than with any other experience I've had. I suggest all undergraduates with even a remote interest in the ocean look into SEA and strongly encourage any that are able to participate in SEA Semester to sign on tout de suite. As it so happens, there is still room on board their Fall "Oceans & Climates" cruise. So all you undergraduates, go check it out. And all the rest of you, spread the word.

Sea Education Association is pleased to announce our

Fall 2008 SEA Semester: Oceans & Climate Distinguished visiting lecturers & student-research advisors

Joining us for this year's semester program will be:

Dr. Cynthia Pilskaln, University of Massachusetts, SMAST
Dr. Christopher Sabine, NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory
Dr. Jorge Sarmiento, Princeton University

SEA Semester: Oceans & Climate is a specialized program for advanced science majors that focuses on the marine carbon cycle and global climate change and takes advantage of a repeated equatorial Pacific transect (Mexico - Tahiti) to observe regional and temporal phenomena. For detailed information (pdf)

NOTE: Some spaces are still available for undergraduates to enroll in this special fall program. We encourage you to talk to interested students as soon as possible, as admission is on a rolling basis.

(PS: the title of this post is from On the Sea by John Keats)

Ebb & Flow

Would have been better if had a tripod. Next time.

more salty poetry

I particularly like the last stanza

Sun and Shadow
by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green,
To the billows of foam-crested blue,
Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen,
Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue:
Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray
As the chaff in the stroke of the flail;
Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way,
The sun gleaming bright on her sail.

Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun,--
Of breakers that whiten and roar;
How little he cares, if in shadow or sun
They see him who gaze from the shore!
He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef,
To the rock that is under his lee,
As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf,
O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea.

Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves
Where life and its ventures are laid,
The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves
May see us in sunshine or shade;
Yet true to our course, though the shadows grow dark,
We'll trim our broad sail as before,
And stand by the rudder that governs the bark,
Nor ask how we look from the shore!

salty poetry

The scurvy dogs good folks over at Deep Sea News have been sharing some ocean-themed poetry as part of National Poetry Month so I thought I would chime in with some of my favorites. First up, maggie and milly and molly and may by e.e. cummings - it seems particularly fitting given how I spent part of this past weekend.

maggie and milly and molly and may
by e.e. cummings
maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

Deep Sea News - Just One Thing Challenge

Do you want to help protect the deep sea?

Are you up to a challenge?

If you answered 'yes' to both of those questions then head on over to DSN and sign up for their weekly "Just One Thing Challenge".

Best of the Deep Sea

As one of the honored judges of this year's Best of Deep Sea News, I'm happy to announce that Craig and Peter have got their self-congratulatory series of posts online - "The Best of the Abyss", "The Best of DSN", and the "Fuzzy Yeti Award", where you can cast your vote for the best DSN post of 2007 (sorta like an Academy Award for Best Picture if it were only awarded to films by James Cameron) . So, head on over to Deep Sea News and enjoy the best of the best (does that make Craig and Peter, the Eric Roberts and Chris Penn of the deep sea?)

SEA Photos; part 1

Finally, as promised, some photos from my brief, but oh so wonderful, trip aboard the SSV Corwith Cramer. Four days of sailing and oceanographic adventure with Sea Education Association. This wasn't so much a scientific cruise as a chance to relive my days weeks months with SEA as an undergraduate and reconnect with a great organization. We sailed. We scienced. We kept a 24 hour watch. We even set the fisherman (sorry, can't find a link to help you with this one). If you ever get a chance to do this, you must. Encourage all your undergrads to look into SEA Semester as well - from a life experience point of view, its one of the best things they could do. Beyond hands-on, practical oceanographic research, SEA Semester builds leadership, self-confidence, teamwork, responsibility, problem solving, physical endurance, and plundering. Well, maybe not plundering. Anyways, on to the photos...be sure to check out Part 2 and Part 3.

The Corwith Cramer awaits


My bunk...and my hairy legs.

Couldn't find A through D

Ship's compass

"Steer a course for others to follow"

Just in case

Topside

Just in case, take 2
(AKA Gumby suits)

What good is a ship without her bell?

Had to (re)learn the ropes


How better to end the day?

Part 2 and Part 3

SEA Photos; part 2

Shipek sediment grab waiting to be deployed
(one of my favorite no-frills, old-school, bruiser of a scientific instrument)

the Shipek coming back onboard

Mmmm...mud from Menemsha Bight

I've been over this bridge about a billion times.
First time going under it.

Any guesses where we are?

Aloft

Sailing through the night.
Red over Green; Sailing Machine

Sunset via porthole

Peeking in the doghouse.

Night lab work.

Not a bad office view, eh?

Part 1 and Part 3

SEA Photos; part 3

Furling the jib out on the bowsprit

Compass by night

Even Associate Deans have to swab the deck

This is what happens when you don't help swab the deck

Furling the tops'l

The carousel waiting to be deployed

12 Niskin bottles and a CTD headed down 50 fathoms

Anti-scurvy agents

Don't know who Louie is, but he's probably a bosun if I had to guess

Ship's lab

Coming home to the Hub

Part 1 and Part 2

Green flash at last

Back on land after a quick, but extremely good time on board the SSV Corwith Cramer. I have tons of pictures and will post some of them with a recap of the experience early next week.

For now though, I wanted to share that I finally saw the elusive green flash at sunrise Wed. morning while on dawn watch (more on that later too). For those who don't know about the green flash, it's a rare optical phenomenon (a small, brief, green flash of light on the horizon, "on top of" the setting/rising sun) that occurs the instant before sunrise or after sunset. It is best viewed where there is a clear, straight horizon, so it mostly associated with sunrises and sunsets over the ocean.

The green flash occurs because the sun's rays are refracted by the earth's atmosphere, separating the light into its spectral colors. When the sun is below the horizon, the shorter, blue wavelengths tend to bend more and get scattered before they reach an observer's eyes, thus there is no blue flash. The longer red and orange wavelengths bend less and do not scatter, but by the time they reach an observer's eyes the sun is just above the horizon and so get washed out by the sun's own brilliance, thus there is no "red flash". Green light waves sit in the middle of the spectrum and are refracted at a good angle and just the right time so that they reach an observer's eyes without being overwhelmed by the sun itself. Thus, under appropriate conditions, the observer sees a green flash.

I have well over a 1000 hours at sea and until this week had never seen a green flash. Some people deny its very existence because they've never seen it no matter how long they've spend on the ocean. Seeing this brief, but brilliant emerald green flash was certainly one of the highlights on my trip. I was in the right place, at the right time, under the right conditions. Definitely worth the lack of sleep.

Stay tuned for more details about the whole trip...I think I'm going to go sleep for a few days now.

---

UPDATE 8/31/07 - A reader, Priscilla B. from South Africa, emailed me about how the San people of South Africa call the Green Flash the Green Python and believe it to bring good fortune to those who see it. Apparently, I was supposed to make a wish when I saw it, but alas, I was too excited about actually seeing it to wish for anything, like world peace, universal health care, or a bitchin' 72" plasma, HD TV. Maybe next time.