Welcome to “Exploring our Oceans”.
Welcome to “Exploring our Oceans”!
Although we still have a few days before we get started on the course, this is a brief welcome to the MOOC, and a taste of some of the topics we have coming up over the next six weeks. This blog site will be home to your mentors and educators for the course, all of us PhD students and academics at NOC who will be guiding you through the material and sharing a little bit about our daily lives here at the National Oceanography Centre.
Very soon each of us will upload a post with some details on our work, and why we have chosen to study the oceans. Our first activity for our learners, is to share a photo that summarises what the ocean means to you, and we have some exciting and unexpected contributions from our course team that will be published early next week here.
We will be covering a broad range of topics, from how the currents and tides work, to the vast array of life hidden beneath the sea, a little bit of the maths behind our understanding of ocean circulation, and spending a little time discussing the planning and preparation that goes into ocean research. In the meantime, here are a couple of photos of some recent field work and activities here at NOC that will be covered on the course!
There is still time to sign up, the material goes live on monday but before then you can explore the previous blog posts here and the website for the National Oceanography Centre, where there are details of our current expeditions and where our research vessels are at the moment. Do also have a look at our undergraduate and postgraduate courses on offer in Southampton.
Enjoy the course and we all look forward to chatting with you in the forums over the next few weeks!
The British Ocean Sediment Core Research Facility, home to the UK’s largest collection of marine sediment cores, vital in understanding the past climate and circulation, in addition to aiding our understanding of marine geohazards.
Giant mussels on the Pacific coast of Canada, taking some time out from fieldwork to explore Vancouver Island…
Some very exciting sand beds, explanations to follow!
Watching the fog roll in after exploring the tsunami management scheme in place in Vancouver.
A beautiful scene from this years 2nd year undergraduate field course in the South of Spain, a training ground for all future geologists!
A natural travertine fountain in Spain, this is related to one of the weeks when we discuss salt, and its importance in the global circulation system. Spain is one of the few regions in the world an ocean dried up in the Messinian (c. 5.9 million years ago) and left behind over 1 km thick of salt and gypsum deposits. It is a classic site for geologists, and a very unusual deposit. More in week 2!