Hi this is Will and Katie your Sea Scholar reporters for the day. It has been a full day with lots of new discoveries and experiences on the high seas. In the morning we went into our groups to learn about the things that this ship can do to increase our knowledge of the oceans. Will learned about bathymetry and marine ecology and Katie went to physical oceanography and geology.
Bathymetry is the art and science of mapping the ocean floor.
The art part comes in interpreting the data and developing maps that are useful to people. It gets a whole lot more complicated when you take into account the things we learned in physical geography like the effects of temperature, salinity, and density of the water. These factors change the speed and direction of the signal and have to be corrected by the computers on board. You have to be a computer whiz to put this all together. It was fun to watch.