Marine research projects

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Billyo

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As I'm going to be spending a fair amount of time wandering about the oceans over the next few years I have been looking for some sort of marine research project to get involved with, you know taking water samples everyday/logging fish sightings/counting shooting stars etc. I had heard of a couple of project but they no longer seem to be active and the one project that turned up after a web search has never come back to me.

So I'm wondering if anyone knows of a project out there that needs some raw data to be collected?
 
Ones that pay you, or ones where you give your time for free?
 
I would of course be delighted to be paid for services rendered, but equally happy to give my time for free.

A caveat- I'll draw the line at lethal sampling of whales and clubbing seals..... :)
 
Billyo said:
As I'm going to be spending a fair amount of time wandering about the oceans over the next few years I have been looking for some sort of marine research project to get involved with, you know taking water samples everyday/logging fish sightings/counting shooting stars etc. I had heard of a couple of project but they no longer seem to be active and the one project that turned up after a web search has never come back to me.

So I'm wondering if anyone knows of a project out there that needs some raw data to be collected?
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You could anchor in Studland Bay for a few years and collect further raw data, which in turn, could resolve a long ongoing debate! :encouragement:;)
 
I'm personally a bit sceptical about the value of many such projects. I do seem to recall one involving amateur readings of water transparency using a simple Secchi disc (a white disc of standard dimensions lowered until invisible, that depth being recorded). A Googling should bring it up if it is still extant.
 
Hydrozoan said:
I'm personally a bit sceptical about the value of many such projects. I do seem to recall one involving amateur readings of water transparency using a simple Secchi disc (a white disc of standard dimensions lowered until invisible, that depth being recorded). A Googling should bring it up if it is still extant.
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That one was actually promoted on this forum by the reseearch group, who also reported results back. A search for "Secchi" shoudl get it.

Spotting cetaceans is also a possibility; there are vast stretches of ocean that are under-reported. I don't know if there are specific programmes, but the International Whaling Commission in Cambridge is friendly and should be able to suggest reporting partners. There;s also the Sea Mammal Reserach Unit, based at St Andrews, these days. The snag there is that identifying less well-known cetaceans isn't easy. Another snag is that for statistical analysis you would have to provide consistent observations over a period of time - it's no good saying we saw an X at this time if you can't also say we didn't see X at these other times! That's a weakness of many surveys, even professional ones - if you weren't looking, how do you distinguish "not seen" from "not present"?

Most other science programmes require equipment that is too bulky, too specialized or too expensive for yachts. There are also usually requirements for calibration that are difficult to fulfil. For example, even getting good depth information in the oceans would require equipment too power hungry for a yacht, and would require routine calibration using conductivity-temperature-depth profiling!
 
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Thinking a bit laterally I'm going to contact the reef survey organisations (reefcheck, REEF etc) and see if they would be interested in doing a sort of roving survey programme where you dive the more inaccessible coral reefs of the world as you sail past them.

Just spitballing here but the consistent surveys over a period of time could be possible if others doing the same route stopped and surveyed the same site year after year- I'm specifically thinking the south pacific here as its a fairly common route for people circumnavigating.

Will also have a chat with the whaling commission and see what that turns up.
 
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