Working on the Cruise Ship!

A really cool part of my job is getting to board the Explorer of the Seas Cruise Ship. It's an affiliation with the University of Miami where they incorporated a bunch of oceanographic and weather instruments onto the cruise ship. So, whenever the cruise ship is moving from one destination to another we can collect important information over time during different seasons for many years. A couple instruments I particularly help out with are the MAERI and ADCPs. The MAERI is a Marine and Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer....more simply it measure temperature and more importantly it measures the skin temperature of the ocean, the very top layer. The ADCP is an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler and gives us information on the speed and direction of ocean currents below the ship.

I get to go onboard about once a month and check all of the instruments to make sure they are working properly and go into the server room to check on the data collection. Below is the website with more information if you are interested:

http://sealion.rsmas.miami.edu/