Moirs Environmental Dialogues

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.