Originally published on the Reefbites website.

For many, the word reef conjures up images of snorkeling in bath-temperature water above vibrant corals and fishes next to a sunny beach. Yet there are more species of corals that illuminate the wintery waters of the deep sea, forming habitats that rival the colors and biodiversity of shallow-water reefs. Cold-water coral and sponge reefs are found around the globe at all latitudes and depths. Anything below 200 meters is deemed “deep-sea,” out of the reach of light. Unlike their shallow-water cousins, cold-water corals don’t have symbiotic algae that provides food via photosynthesis, so they rely on food falling from the sea surface.

Reefs in the deep

Originating from the Norwegian term “rif,” a reef historically referred to corals presenting a danger to ships. However, deep-sea corals can form massive three-dimensional structures thousands of meters underwater, far out of the reach of ships. Thus, deep-sea scientists debate still today about when and if they should use the term to describe most cold-water coral and sponge ecosystems. Cold-water stony corals can settle on the dead skeletons of previous corals, forming large structures typically called reefs, mounds, and hills. The best studied deep-sea coral is Desmophylum pertusum, previously named Lophelia pertusa, because it forms large reef-structures in the northern hemisphere, while Solenosmilia variabilis forms bright orange reefs in the southern hemisphere. In addition to reefs formed by hard corals, octocorals and black corals form deep-sea coral gardens and beds. Even sponges can form large reef structures in the deep!

Species associations

Though not as familiar as the bond between clownfish and anemone, the symbiotic relationship between the coral Desmophylum pertusum and the worm Eunice norvegica is equally fascinating. The worm steals food from the coral polyps, but repays the debt by moving coral fragments together to strengthen the reef framework. In addition, commercial fishes use deep-sea coral and sponge habitats as nursery and feeding grounds, and many other suspension-feeding invertebrates settle at the tops of reefs to feed above the slow moving water nearest the seafloor. 

Threats to deep-sea reefs

Although the deep sea seems far out of the reach of humans, our actions still impact deep-sea corals and sponges. Climate change is warming the deep waters, depleting the oxygen necessary to life. Ocean acidification is dissolving coral skeletons in the deep sea more rapidly than seen in shallow-water corals. As cold-water coral and sponge ecosystems harbor commercial species, fishing activity can destroy the structure-forming species. Even trash from land can reach the deep sea and become entangled in corals and sponges. Fortunately, as the technology for ocean exploration advances, increased understanding of deep-sea coral and sponge ecosystems allows us to make educated management decisions.

References

Miller, Karen J., & Rasanthi M. Gunasekera. 2017. A comparison of genetic connectivity in two deep sea corals to examine whether seamounts are isolated islands or stepping stones for dispersal. Scientific Reports 7: 1–14.

Oppelt, Alexandra, Matthias López, Carlos Rocha. 2017. Biogeochemical analysis of the calcification patterns of cold-water corals Madrepora oculata and Lophelia pertusa along contact surfaces with calcified tubes of the symbiotic polychaete Eunice norvegica: Evaluation of a ‘mucus’ calcification hypothesis. Deep-Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers 127: 90–104.

Roberts, J. Murray, Andrew Wheeler, Andre Friewald, Stephen Cairns. 2009. Cold-Water Corals: The Biology and Geology of Deep-Sea Habitats. Cambridge University Press, New York, United States.

Rogers, Alex D., Andrew S. Brierley, Peter L. Croot. 2015. Delving Deeper: Critical challenges for 21st century deep-sea research. European Marine Board: Technical Report

“Seafloor Ecology Spring Expedition.” n.d. Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

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Oceanography and marine science mentions (counted by Google) peaked in the 1960’s at the time of intense exploration and record breaking dives to the ocean depths (and of course the Apollo missions into space). The latter part of the 20^th century was then characterised by sustained efforts to explore the ocean depths, with the discovery of deep sea hydrothermal vents near seafloor volcanoes and development of a new integrated understanding of how the oceans function, control the climate and how ecosystems operate in this vast, and largely invisible realm. This period saw the burgeoning of new science disciplines and cross-disciplinary efforts and the relative frequency of the words ‘oceanography’ and ‘marine science’ subsequently decreased systematically through to 2019 in Google search counts.

Ocean science has evolved as a specialist subject at a number of Universities in each country across most of the globe. This silo-ing of the subject has not helped its integration into the national psyche, broader society nor mainstream Sustainable Development. Marine science is only touched on in the UK National Curriculum and is taught in a relatively small number of Universities world-wide. To compound this lack of integration, policy making in the coastal, marine and deep-sea realm is distributed across a bewildering number of Government Departments, Agencies, Organisations and Bodies globally, making integrated approaches difficult.

The oceans control our weather, our future climate, supply much of our protein, hold many of our future energy and other resources and are the global highway for ships, cables and pipelines supplying the huge coastal cities across the globe. As the global population increases to well over 9 billion by 2050, our demands on the oceans will increase significantly, yet we have only limited understanding of how to do this sustainably. We know that human activity has already led to ocean-warming, acidification, sea-level rise, depletion of fish-stocks, increases in pollutants and wide-spread degradation. We also know that different combinations of environmental stressors hugely amplify these negative impacts in ways that are hard to predict or reverse.

We need an Ocean Decade to integrate ocean science into our global society, into our education systems, into broader academic research, into our policy-making at every level of Government, into our individual and collective actions.

We need an Ocean Decade to break down national barriers and to define ways to work together to identify regions of our ocean that are most at risk of irreversible damage and protect these as a priority.

We need an Ocean Decade to agree how to create the ocean we need to sustain life on this planet.

There have been 46 different United Nations Decades since the first UN Development Decade (1960-1970).  Our ambition is to make this new Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development one that transforms our discipline, our society and the future of our planet.

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Cast your mind back to a time when things were normal — the second weekend of March 2020. A time before lockdowns and social distancing; when pubs still opened, international travel was easy and live sports were a thing. This story starts in a bar in Tenerife, where a group of scientists, sailors and technicians were enjoying the sun and relishing in the sporting prowess of the England rugby team, as they stormed to victory over the Welsh. We were enjoying our last taste of normal, for what we thought would be a short six weeks. The team was about to embark on a voyage of discovery across the Atlantic, solving some of the many mysteries of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).

The expedition was part of the RAPID project (https://www.rapid.ac.uk/rapidmoc/) which has been continuously monitoring the AMOC since 2004. The backbone of the project is the RAPID array of around 20 or so moorings. These are situated along the 26.5N parallel, stretching from the Canary Islands in the East and Bahamas in the West. The moorings are concentrated off the West coast of Morocco, the mid-Atlantic ridge, and the East of the Bahamas. They’re a real feat of engineering, with some more than 5 km tall. Dotted along the length of the moorings’ anchor wires are MicroCAT (CTD) instruments measuring conductivity, temperature, and pressure, which with geostrophic balance can be used to estimate the strength of the ocean circulation. There’s also a host of more exotic instruments such as current meters, oxygen sensors, remote autonomous samplers and others.

Back to our story — the crew had been tasked with recovering, servicing and redeploying these moorings. Within a day or so we were well on our way and getting stuck into the laborious process of hunting down and laying out moorings. Thankfully (for variety is the spice of life) there were more than just moorings to keep us occupied. Back in Tenerife we had been joined by scientists from NOAA who had entrusted us with a precious cargo — a set of 12 glass spheres containing pressure inverted echo-sounders. These ‘PIES’, as they are affectionately known, may one day become ubiquitous in the global ocean monitoring system. It is hoped that they will be able to replicate some of the functionality of a mooring, but at a fraction of the cost. The PIES are lowered (read: lowered to the surface then dropped for a descent of several thousand metres) to the bottom of the ocean where they remain for a year, measuring the properties of the water column above them. When they’re done measuring they then release their anchor and float up to the surface, beaming back their data to satellites. Though the system has undergone extensive testing, this is the first time they have been deployed in anger — as their data comes in, it will be fascinating to see how successful their deployment has been! 

Having completed the servicing of the Eastern section of the array we embarked on a 4 day steam to the mid-Atlantic ridge, with a brief pause to deploy an Argo float (http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/). Around half way through the passage, a meeting of all the ships company was called. The ship had received a message informing us we were to turn around and steam back to Southampton. It must be said that this wasn’t unexpected. When we left the Canaries, we were aware of the coronavirus and its increasingly rapid spread. It was strange at sea watching the situation unfold, being so very isolated from everything going on back at home. We saw first the toilet roll shortages, then, as the days went on, it became clear things were becoming serious and the virus was causing a huge amount of suffering. Within three days of the decision to turn back having been made, the UK went into lockdown — it was clear heading home was the right decision.

It was to be a long and slow steam back, but we were safe and there were still many other things to keep us occupied…..  

Our 10-day voyage to Southampton gave us ample time to complete our cruise report sections, as standard for all research cruises. We also had enough time to complete some more unusual tasks such as 3D mapping the ship, using a special 3D imaging camera kindly lent to us by colleagues at BAS. Whilst the mapping began back in Tenerife, the additional no-science days allowed us to complete the project. It was an amazing opportunity to enter areas that us scientists wouldn’t normally work in: crawling (literally) around the engine room, workshops and thruster room. It was also an opportunity to chat to the engineers who keep the ship running. We also managed to map one of the two lifeboats. The completed scans will be used in future public outreach activities. 

The return journey also gave the captain the perfect excuse to hold another muster and fire drill for the crew. Whilst the crew were busy extracting a simulated “casualty” from the engine room in full breathing apparatus and fire-proof suits, we were given the much less stressful task of “boundary cooling the fire” from the aft deck. In reality, this meant aiming the hoses overboard and seeing how far you could propel the water.

We may not be marine biologists, but we were delighted to see many dolphins keeping us company on our return journey, with a brief glimpse of a whale. Other non-science cruise highlights were the amazing sunsets we got almost each evening. It was a real treat to spend many an evening on the bridge and Forecastle Deck stargazing under the clearest skies we’re likely to come across. From conversations with the very friendly and knowledgeable bridge crew, we gained more insight into the operation of the ship too. Some of us also got steering lessons!

After 20 days at sea, on Saturday 28th March we arrived at the Port of Southampton and tied up alongside the National Oceanography Centre. All our equipment was put into cages and lifted onto the quayside. Of course this was all done with social distancing in mind, with quayside staff not allowed to come aboard to assist for fear of infecting us. Once the majority of this was done, all scientists and technicians signed off and went home to sit out the lockdown and discover what this “new normal” is all about. In some sense we were very lucky: many commercial seafarers are still stranded offshore with no end in sight to their ordeal. We had also been at sea for the panic buying stage of the pandemic and supermarket stock levels had mostly recovered! Despite our cruise being cut short, the 3 weeks we spent at sea certainly taught us a great deal about time series data collection and was a valuable experience. Of course, we would like to thank chief scientist Ben Moat for inviting us to come aboard, and to all scientists, tech and crew who made the cruise an enjoyable success. 

About the Authors

Matt Clark is a SPITFIRE DTP PhD Student at the University of Southampton, National Oceanography Centre Southampton. You can follow Matt on Twitter: @Ocean_MattC

Fraser Goldsworth is a PhD student with the Oxford DTP in Environmental Research, University of Oxford. You can follow Fraser on Twitter: @FraserOcean

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Every expedition is full of firsts. First cruise with these colleagues, first time on this ship, first time in that location, first time collecting this type of sample or running that analysis on board. Even when it’s not new for me, it’s always new for someone, like the group of people rushing outside at the news of the first iceberg. I’ve seen hundreds, but still I grabbed my jacket and ran outside with them, infected by the excitement. It was a big, tabular iceberg, but it was miles way, just on the horizon against the cloudy-bright sky. Hundreds of photos later everyone went back inside to warm up with some tea, grinning like fools and reluctantly admitting that it didn’t show up very well in the pictures, but we had definitely, probably seen it.

The following day we sailed past a bright white iceberg, irregularly shaped and smooth in some places where it had rolled to expose the areas that had been melting below the waterline. Even from our safe distance, we could tell it dwarfed the ship, this time the excitement was mixed with awe. You can imagine the squeals when we saw penguins swimming around it. Although we like to joke that these “charismatic megafauna” steal the show, seeing marine animals in the wild is always special.

A friend in my oceanography class once told me, “If it’s too small to see, I don’t care about it.”  I am the exact opposite: it’s the tiny things, from plankton to molecules, that fascinate me, because these tiny things have the power to change the world. The reason our planet has an atmosphere with oxygen is a result of cyanobacteria, the photosynthetic bacteria that are still ubiquitous in the oceans. Today, about half of the oxygen we breathe comes from phytoplankton, even though most of us think only of forests when we hear the phrase “the lungs of the planet.”

Along with this generation of oxygen, photosynthesis also draws carbon out of the atmosphere, forming organic matter that can sink. Any carbon not decomposed on the way down can be buried in the seafloor, effectively removing it from the climate system, which is a natural carbon sink that is becoming increasingly important as human carbon emissions rise. Models suggest that if this biological sink in the ocean was turned off, CO₂ in the atmosphere would rise by ~200ppm [Parekh et al., 2006] (for context, current levels are 417 (https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/) and the last glacial maximum was 190ppm (Sigman and Boyle, 2000).

However, in some areas of the ocean, phytoplankton aren’t reaching their full potential, and the Southern Ocean is one such region. Here, phytoplankton are limited by lack of iron [Tagliabue et al., 2017]. My research focuses on understanding the supply of iron from the Antarctic Peninsula, as the seafloor sediments and melting glaciers can provide iron to stimulate phytoplankton growth. We don’t yet know exactly how much iron is coming from these processes, and the Antarctic Peninsula is the fastest warming region of the Southern Hemisphere [Henley et al., 2019], so measuring the supply of iron and understanding how it might change with continued warming is crucial to understanding how carbon will cycle through this region in the future, and subsequently affect global climate.

There are many factors at play in how carbon cycling will respond to future warming, and many are interconnected. For example, as ice shelves melt this brings deep, iron-rich seawater to the surface. The melt water from the ice itself also contains iron. As this water moves offshore and out into the Southern Ocean, it can transport the iron to where it’s needed to promote phytoplankton growth and carbon uptake. Independent of any iron supply, as glaciers retreat this exposes new area of ocean where phytoplankton can grow – and new seafloor where this blue carbon can be buried.

This process is a small but significant carbon sink that we are only just starting to measure  – an early result from the project that myself and three colleagues joined in January [Barnes et al., 2020]. The project, aptly named ICEBERGS, aims to understand how glacial retreat along the Antarctic Peninsula impacts benthic ecosystems. My team’s goal was to sample the seafloor as well as glacial meltwater to constrain how much iron is supplied by these sources.

Studying how our planet is changing is how I ended up spending 28 months of my life in the Antarctic, surrounded by stunningly beautiful landscapes and incredibly smelly wildlife. It’s cold, it’s remote, and it can be very isolated; many of my expeditions have been four weeks away from home and family, but I’ve also spent 12 consecutive months there. The conditions can make routine tasks very challenging, but the sense of community and passion on the research ships and bases makes it even more rewarding. Whether it’s running outside together to see an iceberg, someone unexpectedly stopping in to help after their shift ends, or celebrating packing up the last of the cargo after a successful expedition.

Even after the science work ended, we had some firsts. We had crossed the Antarctic circle into 24h daylight, and heading back north we were looking forward to seeing darkness again. The first cloudless night we spent a long time lying on the deck above the bridge, enjoying our first glimpse of stars for weeks. One of the little things we don’t appreciate until it’s gone, like so many of the things we all miss during the pandemic as we maintain our distance to keep ourselves and our communities safe.

One aspect of the Antarctic that surprised me, and that I love sharing with people, is the variety of sounds that ice can make. The low clinking as brash ice washes against a rocky beach like oversized ice cubes. The muted whooshing of soft, thin sea ice tearing like paper as a small boat pushes through it. The crunch and groan of thick sea ice breaking apart around the bow of a research ship, and the constant scrape of that ice down the sides of the ship as we head toward our next sampling site. The lumps of glacial ice washed up on the beach, made from snow that’s so densely packed and compressed that it would be perfectly clear if not for the millions of tiny bubbles frozen throughout – walking past these in the bright sunshine sounds like being inside a popcorn machine, I think this is my favourite. Perhaps the most impressive though is the loud, deep cracking of an ice shelf, like a not-too-distant canon, the boom echoing off the surrounding mountains as everyone rushes to see where the noise came from, and if we can see any ice tumbling into the sea. When I make an iced coffee or G&T on a hot day, I always add the ice at the end, to hear the sharp crack of the ice cubes as I drop them in. Next time you find yourself with an ice cube tray, close your eyes and try to imagine how it would feel and sound if that ice cube was the size of a block of flats.

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South England’s coastline features chalk cliffs. Chalk is made of skeletons of coccoliths. They sank down on the seafloor from the sunlit waters above. The 100 meters cliff shows a 100 million years history – peaceful deposition during the Cretaceous followed by dramatic movement of land and sea.

While hiking in Lake District, views are different. Mountains consist of igneous rocks that are no longer white. As a result, we may find the drinking water not that ‘hard’. As we move on, stop by a giant rock, and stare at the scratches, a picture of glacier just appears.

Further north of the land, we may be impressed by the dark basalts. They are formed from cooling of lava, related to Cenozoic volcanic activities when the opening of the Atlantic began.

Geochemists are using elemental and isotopic tools to decode the clues about the Earth’s history. For example, the rise in atmosphere oxygen level will mobilise redox-sensitive elements (like iron and chromium), and will change their isotopic compositions. The delicate variations in metal isotope signatures that are recovered from sedimentary rocks are hints of the past climate change.

The power of nature not only travels in time, but also shapes nowadays landscapes. I thought of a field trip to a small island off the coast, which is characterised by muddy flat on its west coast while sandy beach on its east. Under weak hydrodynamic condition, fine sediments deposit, and form the salt marsh. On the other side, contrastively, strong currents bring the coarse sands, as well as tourism.

When human activity adds onto the natural power, things become more complicated. Once during my master’s project, I surveyed an estuarine area where metal rich effluents were discharged from industries. You know, however, estuary is the sensitive zone that links land and sea and hosts living communities. Hopefully I can see the area is now healing from lack of mitigation,

‘Things will settle back to their original rhythms, season after season’.

We’re now stepping into Anthropocene, a proposed geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth’s geology and ecosystems. This is an epoch that our actions can positively shape the future of our blue planet.

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As you’ve seen in Week 1 of the course, hydrothermal venting occurs when seawater penetrates into the ocean crust, becomes heated, reacts with the surrounding rock, and then rises to the seafloor as fluid and gas. Forty years of exploration has yielded an inventory of more than 500 active vent fields (according to Baker et al., 2016). They are often thousands of meters below the surface of the ocean, along the large volcanic mountain ranges called the mid-ocean ridges.

These submarine hot springs are a major gateway for the exchange of heat and chemicals between the solid earth and the deep ocean. The chemicals coming out of the hydrothermal vents could be liquids, particles or gases, and include inorganic compounds as well as organic molecules. The leaky vents play a potentially important role in the cycling of these chemicals in the oceanic inventory.

You have noticed the fascinating life in hydrothermal vent ecosystems – can you imagine how these organisms survive in the high pressure, high temperature, and toxic environments? They don’t even need sunlight, as chemical energies are supplied through a process called chemosynthesis. These also provide insights into origins of life on Earth.

In the year 1985, a group of scientists from Cambridge participated in a cruise that produced the first photographs of a hydrothermal vent called the TAG (Trans-Atlantic Geotraverse) which is the first vent discovered on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The spreading rate of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is slow (less than 40 mm/yr), and this means such hydrothermal phenomena is just not limited to fast-spreading oceanic ridges (Rona et al., 1986).

In the 1990s, a multidisciplinary scientific investigation of the mid-ocean ridges was conducted by a list of British institutes (BRIDGE Programme, https://wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Mid-Ocean_Ridge_Initiative). Many scientists and research centres around the UK contributed to this programme, and cruises explored the North Atlantic, Southwest Atlantic, and Southwest Pacific. ”Every area- geophysics, geochemistry, biology and technology, had success.” But does this mean the hydrothermal exploration is complete? Not really. There are still questions to answer- about how many hydrothermal vents, about organisms that surround the vents, about the chemical fluxes transported to the oceans.

Here is a link from NOC website showing the research ships, and you must have been aware that they are the primary method of oceanographic observation http://noc.ac.uk/facilities/ships Each research expedition has a cruise ID (for example, DY is for Discovery and JC for James Cook). The maiden scientific voyage of James Cook was in 2007, and after 12 years, the JC180 expedition has now finished. Behind these numbers, it was the scientific missions that have been achieved. The missions have always considered hydrothermal exploration as important. I was impressed when I was exploring the inventory of research cruises onboard James Cook, here I’d like to list some of what I’ve read:

JC042 (2010-01-07 to 2010-02-21): the exploration of deep-sea vents around Antarctica;

JC044 (2010-03-25 to 2010-04-22): the discovery of the world’s deepest hydrothermal vent in the Cayman trough;

JC080 (2012-12-02 to 2012-12-30): revisiting Southern Ocean vents that teem with life http://hotventscoldocean.noc.ac.uk/;

JC082 (2013-02-06 to 2013-03-08): revisiting hydrothermal vents in the Caribbean http://intothecaymanabyss.noc.ac.uk/

JC138 (2016-07-08 to 2016-08-24): exploring seafloor massive sulphide deposits around TAG https://bluemining.eu/research-cruise-2-james-cook-138/

JC156 (2017-12-20 to 2018-02-03): exploring iron supply from Mid-Atlantic Ridge https://ga13fridge.wordpress.com/

……

The vents are hot, the sciences (and people who are devoted to sciences) are cool. What’s going to be the next expedition?

References:

Baker, E.T., Resing, J.A., Haymon, R.M., Tunnicliffe, V., Lavelle, J.W., Martinez, F., Ferrini, V., Walker, S.L. and Nakamura, K., 2016. How many vent fields? New estimates of vent field populations on ocean ridges from precise mapping of hydrothermal discharge locations. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 449, 186-196.

Deamer, D., 2014. Origin of life: The first spark. Nature, 514 (7522), 302.

Rona, P.A., Klinkhammer, G., Nelsen, T.A., Trefry, J.H. and Elderfield, H., 1986. Black smokers, massive sulphides and vent biota at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Nature, 321 (6065), 33.

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As an Honorary Fellow of both the Geological Society of America and the Geological Society of London, he was recognised for his achievements, not only in science but as an ambassador for geological science and its promotion to the wider public. His citation for the Geological Society of London states, ‘Maarten de Wit is one of Africa’s most distinguished earth scientists whose research interests span geodynamics, tectonics and stratigraphy, early earth processes and the evolution of the Gondwana supercontinent.  Despite his European birth, he has become an ambassador for the entire African continent. His promotion of the ‘Africa Alive Corridors’ programme is inspirational, as it embraces science, culture, landscape in a positive, educational, pan-African context and is a genuine attempt to embrace all African society.’

I met Maarten in 2016 on my first visit to South Africa to build the partnership between the University of Southampton and Nelson Mandela University. It took some time at the outset for Maarten to recognise that the Southampton collaboration was not a corporate, management-led delegation and that there was real benefit in working together on our common goals. Once we had passed this test, he was the most fabulous host, always challenging and insightful, always generous with his ideas and time.

He took us swimming at dawn in Summerstrand Bay with his group of hardy year-round swimmers.  Laughing, he did nothing to settle my nerves around Great White attacks by telling us to the stay in the middle of the group of swimmers to avoid being picked off. Discussions over breakfast on the deck while the beach came to life was as always, stimulating and challenging.

He and his group in the Africa Earth Observatory Network are pushing the boundaries of cross disciplinary thinking and challenging the way we educate the next generation, from all backgrounds and we can learn much from these new ways of thinking.

We made Maarten a visiting Professor in Southampton later in 2016 and his visit to our campus was memorable in so many ways for staff and students at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton. A particularly unfogettable day was in the field at Portland Bill, where he was still challenging our thinking about geological time, pulling disparate strands of science and society together to produce new concepts.

He hosted the University’s digital team visit to Nelson Mandela University in 2017, inducting them in the beauty and splendour of the Eastern Cape. The contributions from young researchers from the Africa Earth Observatory Network, Bastien Linol and Stephanie Plön, add a fantastic international dimension to our Exploring our Ocean course the continues to fascinate our learners and develop new conversations in each and every run.  We dedicate our current run of Exploring our Oceans to the memory of our passionate colleague and great friend, Maarten de Wit.

May his unbounded spirit live on in the next generation of learners and stewards of this planet.

Rachel Mills, April 2020.

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One of my pastimes these last days of lockdown is to do a digital sort out of my online presence and my hard drive and I’ve realised what a massive job this is that will take me weeks. Relevant to deep ocean exploration here are some things I found that brought back great memories:

Spending time in a small space, with the same people during lockdown, day in, day out is a little like being at sea. Routine provides the same measure of the passing of time and sundown in the garden marks the end of each day.

Going through my hard-drive I realise I have thousands of pictures of sunsets, most of which are only identifiable by their date – I love sunsets but do I need so many?

So come join us online, come share your passion for the ocean and join a global community of over 50,000 learners. Share your photos and ideas with us all, and together we can make a difference.

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I found out only recently that this Draw-a-Scientist activity was not something just developed for outreach activities but actually stems from a test developed in 1983 by David Wade Chambers to understand when children started to develop a set image of a stereotypical scientist. Spoiler alert: the results are completely disheartening. Of the thousands of drawings, only 28 featured female scientists. 

In relation to this, a question I frequently get asked by parents and guardians is who inspired me to become a scientist. No matter how many times I get asked this I never feel like I have a good enough answer. Yes, I can stand there and list off names such as Sir David Attenborough and Mary Anning but the truth is that they, amongst many others, including those I am lucky enough to work with and learn from today, have inspired me only as I got older and learnt about them and their work. 

So, who really inspired me as a kid? Well, the truth is that I never grew out of the incessant asking ‘why?’ stage as a child (and I still haven’t!) and as clichéd as it may sound my inspiration was the environment around me which to me was so full of beauty and unanswered (but answerable!) questions.   

I consider myself very lucky that every day I get to wake up, go to work and have the freedom to ask questions and work tirelessly to answer them in the never-ending pursuit of broadening our horizons. I get to meet, work with and learn from incredible people from all around the world and share what we learn with generations both young and old. Advancing our knowledge is one great marathon relay race with each scientist helping take a step or two.  And you can help take a step too. It is never too late to be a scientist. It all starts with a single question. How? Why? What? Where? When? Who? All you need to do is ask a question and have the desire to find the answer. 

Science is for everyone and science is everywhere. 

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If you had told me a year ago that I would be answering questions on the Equations of Motion in a physics exam, or preparing a geophysical survey report for a proposed wind farm – well, I would have said that you were mad. I do not consider myself a scientific kind of girl. Building businesses, growing assets and marketing brands is more my vibe. Yet here I am. With a head saturated with scientific knowledge and newly grey hairs.

Oceanography covers every aspect of the oceans, and complementing the biology, chemistry, physics and geology are those subjects which specialise in their overlap: geophysics, biogeochemistry and ecology amongst others. Then, of course, there is maths, which appears to weave not only the oceans, but the entire cosmos together. In short, oceanography is 8 disciplines for the price of 1, and all this knowledge can be yours in just one short year.

MSc Oceanography at Southampton is a postgraduate conversion course, designed to follow an undergraduate science degree. Much of the first semester is “introductory” modules, with the purpose of allowing students to brush up on their rustier subjects. Having not studied since 2005 it all felt new to me, although I suspect it was no easier for my peers. The combination of relentless coursework deadlines and post-Christmas exams making undergraduate studies seem relatively more akin to the demands of primary school years.

The elected modules of the second semester are held in classes with students who have been specialising in their subject for up to 4 years, whether it be geology, geophysics or marine biology. In this context of playing catch-up and forever being out of our depth, we have just completed a month without a single day off. Our final semester will be individual research projects, culminating in a 25,000 word report in September. It is relentlessly challenging, exhausting, often overwhelming and totally fascinating work.

I find myself telling friends about the aragonite saturation horizon over dinner, mostly because I think it sounds cool and makes me sound clever. They ask me how I’m going to apply all of this knowledge when the course is over. Well, first of all, I’m going to put a halt to those greys and take a holiday. But then I’m going to get that job I’ve wanted my whole life because nothing in the world could have prepared me better than this masters.

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