AT THE ORIGINS OF A NEW OCEAN SCIENCE. ON THE CENTENARY OF THE BIRTH OF ACADEMICIAN A.S. MONIN (1921–2007)

July 2, 2021 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Andrei S. Monin, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (since 1972), Director of the P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1965–1987, a world-famous outstanding Soviet and Russian scientist in the field of Earth and Ocean sciences. The article highlights the main fundamental scientific results obtained by this scientist as a result of his many years of research on a wide range of problems of hydromechanics, dynamics of the earth's interior, planetology, atmospheric physics, and first of all, gives a high assessment of his capital contribution to domestic and world oceanology.

A Bright, LED-Lit Future for Ocean Sciences

LEDs have taken over the global lighting market. Now it’s time for this versatile, low-cost, and energy-efficient technology to illuminate oceanic processes.

Gender Differences in NSF Ocean Sciences Awards

In this study, we examine how women’s representation in National Science Foundation Ocean Sciences (NSF-OCE) awards changed between 1987 and 2019 and how it varied across different programs, research topics, and award types. Women’s participation in NSF-OCE awards increased at a rate of approximately 0.6% per year from about 10% in 1987 to 30% in 2019, and the strong similarity between the temporal trends in the NSF-OCE awards and the academic workforce suggests that there was no gender bias in NSF funding throughout the 33-year study period. The programs, topics, and award types related to education showed the strongest growth, achieving and surpassing parity with men, while those related to the acquisition of shared instrumentation and equipment for research vessels had the lowest women’s representation and showed relatively little change over time. Despite being vastly outnumbered by men, women principal investigators (PIs) tended to do more collaborative work and had a more diversified “portfolio” of research and research-related activities than men. We also found no evidence of gender bias in the amount awarded to men and women PIs during the study period. These results show that, despite significant increases in women’s participation in oceanography over the past three decades, women have still not reached parity with men. Although there appears to be no gender bias in funding decisions or amount awarded, there are significant differences between women’s participation in specific research subject areas that may reflect overall systemic biases in oceanography and academia more broadly. These results highlight areas where further investment is needed to improve women’s representation.

The Oceans’ Biological Carbon Pumps: Framework for a Research Observational Community Approach

A recent paradigm explains that the downward pumping of biogenic carbon in the ocean is performed by the combined action of six different biological carbon pumps (BCPs): the biological gravitational pump, the physically driven pumps (Mixed Layer Pump, Eddy Subduction Pump and Large-scale Subduction Pump), and the animal-driven pumps (diurnal and seasonal vertical migrations of zooplankton and larger animals). Here, we propose a research community approach to implement the new paradigm through the integrated study of these BCPs in the World Ocean. The framework to investigate the BCPs combines measurements from different observational platforms, i.e., oceanographic ships, satellites, moorings, and robots (gliders, floats, and robotic surface vehicles such as wavegliders and saildrones). We describe the following aspects of the proposed research framework: variables and processes to be measured in both the euphotic and twilight zones for the different BCPs; spatial and temporal scales of occurrence of the various BCPs; selection of key regions for integrated studies of the BCPs; multi-platform observational strategies; and upscaling of results from regional observations to the global ocean using deterministic models combined with data assimilation and machine learning to make the most of the wealth of unique measurements. The proposed approach has the potential not only to bring together a large multidisciplinary community of researchers, but also to usher the community toward a new era of discoveries in ocean sciences.

A resonant high-pressure sensor based on dual cavities

High-pressure sensors enable expansive demands in ocean sciences, industrial controls, and oil explorations. Successful sensor realized in piezoresistive high-pressure sensors which suffer from the key issue of compromised accuracies due to serious temperature drifts. Herein, this paper presents a high accuracy resonant high-pressure sensor with the pressure range of 70 MPa. Different from conventional resonant high-pressure sensor, the developed sensor utilized a dual-resonator-cavity design to minimize temperature disturbances and improve the pressure sensitivities. Besides, four circle cavities were used to maintain a high vacuum level for resonators after anodic bonding process. In details, Dual resonators, which is parallelly placed in the tensile and compressive stresses areas of a rectangular pressure sensitive diaphragm, are separated vacuum-packaged in the parallel dual cavities. Thus, pressure under measurement bends the pressure sensitive diaphragm, producing an increased pressure sensitivity and a decreased temperature sensitivity by the differential outputs of the dual resonators. Parameterized mathematical models of the sensor were established and the parameters of the models were optimized to adjust the pressure sensitivities and the temperature sensitivities of the sensor. Simplified deep reactive ion etching was used to form the sensing structure of the sensor and only once anodic bonding was used to form vacuum packaging for the dual resonators. Experimental results confirmed that the Q values of the resonators were higher than 32 000. Besides, the temperature sensitivity of the sensor was reduced from 44 Hz °C−1 (494 ppm °C−1) to 1 Hz °C−1 (11 ppm °C−1) by the differential outputs of the dual resonators in the temperature range of −10 °C–60 °C under the pressure of 1000 kPa. In addition, the accuracy of the sensor was better than 0.02% FS within the pressure range of 110–6500 kPa and the temperature range of −10 °C–60 °C by using a polynomial algorithm.

Tracing the occurrence of ocean sciences issues in Greek secondary education textbooks

This study aims to investigate the presence of ocean sciences issues in Greek secondary education (grades 7-12) science textbooks, in respect of the Ocean Literacy Framework. Content analysis was undertaken concerning both textual and pictorial materials of the Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Geography – Geology courses. Results revealed that the textbooks under study contain limited and fragmented information with regard to the seven essential principles of the framework, while a comparison with the Ocean Literacy Scope & Sequence evidences inconsistencies. The suggestions arising from this study could help curriculum designers, textbook authors, marine educators, and marine scientists to cooperate on a wider scale towards the inclusion of ocean literacy topics into national curricula worldwide.

Ocean Literacy across the Mediterranean Sea basin: Evaluating Middle School Students’ Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behaviour towards Ocean Sciences Issues

The Mediterranean Sea is characterized by rich biodiversity, and its region hosts people living in several countries with a rich variety of cultures, but – at the same time – it is “under siege”, due to anthropogenic pressures. To address these pressures, many actions are needed aiming, among others, at establishing Ocean Literacy (OL) across the Mediterranean countries and preparing the future generation of Mediterranean Sea-literate citizens. Towards this aim, the present cross-national study investigated OL issues in relation to content knowledge, possible common misconceptions, attitudes, and the self-reported behavior of 2,533 middle school students from eight Mediterranean countries (Croatia, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Malta, Spain, and Turkey), as well as certain background elements (e.g., gender, grade level, environmental education experience, sources of relevant information). The results of this study revealed that middle school students of all studied countries possess a moderate level of ocean sciences content knowledge, while they showed satisfactory pro-environmental attitudes and behavior. These findings along with further research are expected to function as a baseline for the design, implementation, and launch of specifically targeted programs, educational activities, teaching resources, curricula, and school textbooks, which will be achieved through close collaboration between schools, universities, research institutes, and Ministries of Education, thus contributing to the future protection and sustainable development of the Mediterranean Sea region.

Changing the Culture of Coastal, Ocean, and Marine Sciences: Strategies for Individual and Collective Actions

Geoscience is plagued with structural and systemic barriers that prevent people of historically excluded groups from fully participating in, contributing to, and accruing the benefits of geosciences. A change in the culture of our learning and working environments is required to dismantle barriers and promote belonging, accessibility, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in our field. Inspired by a session organized at the 2020 Ocean Sciences Meeting, the goal of this paper is to provide a consolidated summary of a few innovative and broadening participation initiatives that are being led by various stakeholders in academia (e.g., students, faculty, administrative leaders) at different institutional levels (e.g., universities, professional societies). The authors hope that the strategies outlined in this paper will inspire the coastal, ocean, and marine science community to take individual and collective actions that lead to a positive culture change.