Ocean science with diving honey bear and bathythermo-duck
December 14, 2017
Hosted by Rob Moir
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Rob Moir talks to Don Blair, a physicist at the Center for Civic Media in Somerville, and Kyle Neumann, a marine science PhD student at UCSB, about an ingenious device that measures salinity and changes in temperature and depth to find the thermocline, the boundary between water masses. While aboard the RV Nautilus in the Pacific, Don created a small circuit board that fits into a honey bear squeeze bottle to measure water temperature with depth. They added mineral oil and fitted a rubber glove on top for the changing pressure. It dove successfully to 1,000 feet. Don is enlarging with a salinity sensor that will go into a decoy duck. The “bathythermo-duck” will be used to find the thermocline, to document climate change impacts on the ocean. Ocean River Institute’s Deep Sea Canyon Rangers are working to protect sperm whales from ship strikes, cold water corals from trawls, and to prevent mining, oil and gas drilling in NE Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.
Moir’s Environmental Dialogues
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With the knowledge of Carson and the courage of Achilles, individuals are steadfastly going the distance to defend wildlife and ecosystems from assaults of environmental degradations and destructions. Join environmental studies scientist Dr. Rob Moir for lively dialogue and revealing narrative inquiry into how individuals are overcoming the obstacles turning forlorn hope into effective actions for oceans, rivers, watersheds, wildlife and ecosystems. Discover how listening to individuals, thinking locally, and acting in concert with other, you can act to save ecosystems. Got environmental stewardship? Become an Eco-steward. Act to bring about a greener and blue Planet Earth.
Rob Moir
Rob Moir is director and founder of the Ocean River Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dr. Moir, an educator and scientist, has been a leader of citizen science and efforts to clean up Salem Sound and Boston Harbor, as founder of Salem Sound Harbor Monitors & Salem Sound 2000, later president of Save the Harbor/Save the Bay, and through his appointment by the Secretary of Interior to the Boston Harbor Islands Partnership. He was formerly Curator of Natural History at the Peabody Essex Museum, Curator of Education at the New England Aquarium and Executive Director of the Discovery Museums in Acton, MA. Dr. Moir was awarded a Switzer Environmental Fellowship from the Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation, and the James Centorino Award for Distinguished Performance in Marine Education by the National Marine Educators Association, which he later served as president. He was Sea Education Association’s first assistant scientist to work consecutive voyages of the R.V. Westward in 1979 and 1980, an advancement officer for his alma mater, Hampshire College and serves today on the boards of his alma mater, Cambridge School of Weston, Ocean Champions, and the Massachusetts League of Environmental Voters. Dr. Moir has a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies and a Masters of Science and Teaching from Antioch New England Graduate School in Keene, NH and certificate of studies from the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole.
