Education In Ocean Engineering
Authors: Davidson J. Blaine , Stephen Charles R. 
Published: October 2008

At last count there were 30 ocean engineers in the world, 30 at least who could claim the title as a result of their educational program at the undergraduate level. This paper will discuss the experiment which produced these people and will provide details of the ocean engineering program at Florida Atlantic U. in Boca Raton, Fla.

Florida Atlantic U. is one of the newer elements in the Florida state-university system, located in Boca Raton, on the lower east coast of Florida, some 40 miles north of Miami and about 2 miles inland from the exact spot where the Gulf Stream makes its nearest approach to the coast line. The University, an upper division school with only juniors, seniors and graduate students, offers a BS Degree in Ocean Engineering, the first degree of this type to be offered at the undergraduate level.

An ocean engineer must be many things to many people, and an educational program which presumes to give this title to its graduates must take cognizance of the multidiscipline approach required for work in the ocean. First and foremost, the young graduate must be an engineer if he is to be appreciably different from the traditional oceanographer. In fact, he must be several kinds of engineer. He must understand materials and structures, the corrosive and destructive nature of the ocean environment, the effects of the high pressures of ocean depths and basic engineering principles. In short, he needs an extensive background in the areas of mechanical and civil engineering.

To do successful work in the ocean, information must be obtained and, in most cases, transmitted back to shore installations. Electronics, communications, instrumentation and cabling become an integral part of everyday problems. Electrical power must be provided to most installations. In many-cases electronics and radio communications will not solve the problem. Electromagnetic waves are notoriously poor carriers of information under the Ocean and when a cable is not available, and even with a cable the are sometimes outperformed by acoustic transmission means. Certainly in the area of underwater imaging, depth profiling and underwater search applications there is no comparison between the capabilities of electromagnetics and acoustics. Our engineer then must have training in electrical engineering and in underwater acoustics.

Finally, if he is to work in the ocean, he must know something about the Ocean itself, its physical and chemical properties, the characteristics of the ocean floor and subbottom and something of the nature of the creatures which he is likely to encounter in a marine environment.

In past years those who worked in the ocean either learned about the ocean from sad practical experience after studying one of the basic scientific or engineering disciplines., or they studied oceanography in school and then, in general, bungled their way through basic engineering problems by the cut-and-try method with probably more failures than successes. This is not meant to belittle those who have produced the developments which we have today, but it is meant to suggest that there is probably a more efficient way to train the next generation of engineers to work in the ocean.