What do all those letters mean?
I recieved an email asking what all those acronyms in the drifter post mean so here goes.
NOAA - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
This the Federal agency that administers the National Marine Fisheries Sevice, the National Weather Service etc.
NOAA has a fleet of Research Vessels - hence R/V Albatross etc.
WHOI - pronounced "Hooey" - Stands for Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. For those of you who don't know, WHOI is one of the premier marine research facilities in the world and is located down in Woods Hole Massachusetts on Cape Cod. It is home to the submersible Alvin that you might have seen on some television specials.
"Rachel" surface drifters. - The drifters we build here at SMCC are designed to track ocean currents at various depths. We have a number of different designs and they are all named after a student who put in the time and effort to make them work.
The "Rachel is one of our most popular and is named after Rachel Grisham who really spearheaded the buildout of these units. (By the way, I believe Rachel is graduating from USM with her B.S. in Biology right about now. Congratulations Rachel!)
These units are are equipped with a GPS unit that transmits fixes at regular intervals (every 35 minutes with the ones in the water right now) to a satellite which then downlinks the data to National Marine Fisheries Service at Woods Hole and to us here at SMCC.
We also have "Heathers" (grduating tomorrow from UMO with her B.S in Marine Science and Physical Oceanography. Congratulations Heather!), "Rebeccas" and our latest design - "Pauls". The Pauls are named after Paul Hodder, an exchange student from Ireland here at SMCC, who designed and tested a small inshore, or 'estuary' drifter that we hope to be deploying here in Casco Bay this summer and fall.
Paul is heading back to Ireland soon and we'll miss him. He was a pleasure to work with.
I hope this all helped.
NOAA - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
This the Federal agency that administers the National Marine Fisheries Sevice, the National Weather Service etc.
NOAA has a fleet of Research Vessels - hence R/V Albatross etc.
WHOI - pronounced "Hooey" - Stands for Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. For those of you who don't know, WHOI is one of the premier marine research facilities in the world and is located down in Woods Hole Massachusetts on Cape Cod. It is home to the submersible Alvin that you might have seen on some television specials.
"Rachel" surface drifters. - The drifters we build here at SMCC are designed to track ocean currents at various depths. We have a number of different designs and they are all named after a student who put in the time and effort to make them work.
The "Rachel is one of our most popular and is named after Rachel Grisham who really spearheaded the buildout of these units. (By the way, I believe Rachel is graduating from USM with her B.S. in Biology right about now. Congratulations Rachel!)
These units are are equipped with a GPS unit that transmits fixes at regular intervals (every 35 minutes with the ones in the water right now) to a satellite which then downlinks the data to National Marine Fisheries Service at Woods Hole and to us here at SMCC.
We also have "Heathers" (grduating tomorrow from UMO with her B.S in Marine Science and Physical Oceanography. Congratulations Heather!), "Rebeccas" and our latest design - "Pauls". The Pauls are named after Paul Hodder, an exchange student from Ireland here at SMCC, who designed and tested a small inshore, or 'estuary' drifter that we hope to be deploying here in Casco Bay this summer and fall.
Paul is heading back to Ireland soon and we'll miss him. He was a pleasure to work with.
I hope this all helped.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home