Training the next generation of deep-sea expedition leaders

Summary: Major obstacles in inclusively addressing the pressing research needs and areas of opportunity within the ocean science and technology enterprise are the lack of diverse leaders for oceanographic expeditions and authentic partnerships with local communities. While our academic system prepares a highly skilled workforce capable of advanced scientific research, the workforce is often lacking the practical leadership training in how to propose, fund, permit, plan, direct, report on, and deliver data from complex oceanographic field work, especially for deep-sea operations, expeditions that include diverse teams, and expeditions with local partners. The Crustal Ocean Biosphere Research Accelerator (COBRA, cobra.bigelow.org), funded by the NSF’s AccelNet program, created a virtual Master Class to address this gap, with the first iteration for 12 participants offered in Spring 2022 (cobra.pubpub.org). With appropriate resources, this Master Class could be scaled to reach a larger audience. Increased offerings will lead to the outcome of a more diverse community of participants submitting more proposals to use assets in the US academic research fleet and/or participating as leaders of expeditions. This idea directly compliments the “immediate opportunities” #5 (support NOMEC) and #6 (engage in the UN Ocean Decade) identified in the Opportunities and Actions report, and could have knock-on effects on other opportunities by supporting growth of the workforce capable of leading expeditions on these topics (for example, #1 facilitate offshore wind energy development and #4 explore implementation of blue carbon solutions). COBRA is an endorsed project of the UN Ocean Decade.

Sector: Academia
Organization: Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences
POC: Beth Orcutt, borcutt@bigelow.org
Other Contacts: Julie Huber, jhuber@bigelow.org