The librarian provides assistance to high school students throughout the state who are working on science fair projects and to teachers creating units for their classes. Funding for the SkIO library is provided by the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography and the University of Georgia Libraries through a cooperative arrangement. The vessel is used for biological, chemical, physical, and geological oceanographic studies in estuarine and continental shelf waters. It is equipped with a Global Positioning System, a digital fathometer, and a continuously recording suite of sensors that measure temperature, salinity, and other water properties, all integrated into a computer-controlled data acquisition system. The vessel has wet and dry laboratory space and several winches for deploying nets, water-collecting apparatus, and electronic instruments for measuring currents and water properties.
Accommodations are available to support a maximum of eight scientists for up to a week at sea.
A research vessel serves as a seagoing laboratory and is, of course, vital to the work of SkIO scientists. The Blue Fin, because of its age and limited capabilities, will be marginally adequate for this type of work. A vessel of this type, of about the same length as the Blue Fin, provides considerably more seaworthiness, greater versatility, and comparable operating costs. The Race Track Recirculating Flume SkIO's flume facility was built to enable scientists to study the hydrodynamic processes of the turbulent boundary layer within the controlled environment of the laboratory. The facility was designed by Skidaway engineer Lee Knight and construction was completed during 1993.