“There’s stark fear and terror in their voices today when they talk about the oceans.”
Jim Gilbert, board president of the International SeaKeepers Society, isn’t exaggerating when he describes the reaction of scientists he speaks with on a regular basis. They’re seeing changes in the ocean’s PH balance a mere 10 feet below the surface that they didn’t expect to see for a century. “You’re really talking about changing the basic chemistry of the ocean that has allowed life as we know it to evolve,” he explains.
The deteriorating health of the sea is among the reasons why Gilbert got involved with the SeaKeepers Society just prior to its inception in 1998. Then the editor of Showboats magazine, Gilbert was approached by two gentlemen who wanted to install scientific equipment on superyachts, knowing that the places yachts travel to are sometimes regions where research vessels don’t venture. They also knew that some of these very same owners were worried about pollution and climate change. Since the magazine had been supporting conservation causes, Gilbert was happy to help build awareness: “It was a way to directly engage yacht owners in conservation,” by turning the yacht “into a research platform,” not simply asking for money.
Fast forward to present day, and the International SeaKeepers Society counts about 30 megayachts among its research assistants, with an additional 25 vessels made up of cruise ships, icebreakers, and other commercial or research craft. Equally important, another 10 to 12 vessels of all these types are awaiting the ability to assist.
How? By agreeing to have the SeaKeeper 1000 (left, in cut-away view) installed. This ocean and atmospheric monitoring system provides data to scientists worldwide; in fact, according to Gilbert, six percent of the world’s weather data is taken with the SeaKeeper equipment, used by NOAA, the National Weather Service, and the World Meteorological Association, the latter of which is made up of 156 countries. One through-hull fitting is all that’s necessary, and the unit, approved by both ABS and Lloyds, even contains a cofferdam to contain any leaks. A hydrodynamic wing sits in front of the penetration, to eliminate bubbles as the yacht moves. The SeaKeeper 1000 additionally has a “wet box” for measurements, containing a plug-and-play sensor that the yacht’s engineer can easily remove for recalibration (performed by SeaKeepers’ personnel). It also contains a “dry box” that’s tied in to the yacht’s satcom, allowing the transmission of data from the sensor–paid for by NOAA.
That cost pickup is a nice benefit, because there’s a lot of data transmitted. “A single SeaKeeper vessel takes and stores 14,400 measurements a day–measuring 10 meteorological, climatologic, and oceanographic parameters from samples taken every minute while underway,” Gilbert says. These parameters include the levels of PH, chlorophyll, oxygen, and more from the water as well as barometric pressure and wind direction and speed. Then, every three hours, a snapshot of this data is sent via satcom to NOAA and the National Weather Service. (NOAA shares the data with the World Meteorological Association.) The combination of parameters is key, Gilbert says, because it’s not enough to know just one or the other–a practice that had been in place until the SeaKeeper 1000 was created, he explains. Scientists need to learn whether sea life is affected by water being churned up. Consider, for example, a storm stirring up higher-acidity water toward the surface, driving it to reach fish and other organisms swimming a few feet down. That can affect their ability to reproduce.
Just how much data has been collected? Last fall the Society passed the 300-million measurement mark, Gilbert says. In fact, he adds, last year alone, the units collected 93 million different measurements. Because of the frequency of data collection and the fact that the yachts are always moving, the International SeaKeepers Society and its members have successfully arranged meetings with influential individuals ranging from Congressmen to NOAA scientists. And they’re helping scientists better monitor specific sea life. They’re just learning now, for example, that the shells of mussels and clams living in the world’s northern climates are thinning.
To be a part of the International SeaKeepers Society, yacht owners pay a $75,000 membership fee plus $10,000 in annual dues for maintenance and calibration of the unit. The unit alone costs about $40,000 to create and install, Gilbert says, but the funds also go toward assisting researchers with the creation of new sensors that will measure things like bacteria and heavy metals. They additionally support public outreach programs; the Society is working with marinas and other organizations to create educational kiosks with video and interactive data screens.
If the fee still strikes you as a lot, the members would beg to differ. How do you put a price on the data having opened doors over the past decade? And how do you put a price on scientists now having the ability to determine what parts of the ocean are more vulnerable than others?
“The ocean is so vast,” Gilbert says, that there’s no way to know whether the damage done is reversible. “This is really a serious, long-term problem,” and the Society intends to continue helping scientists improve their knowledge.
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