September 18, 2018 — To understand what climate change is doing to the Pacific Ocean scientists need data.
Lots of it.
Traditionally, data has been expensive to secure because it involves large equipment and ocean voyages. But the miniaturization of technology and some clever new machines mean scientists are now getting lots of data — sometimes delivered via phone to the comfort of an office chair.
A good example can be found on the deck of the Forerunner, a small Clatsop Community College research vessel that sails out of Astoria.
A deck hand lowers a detector the size of a suitcase into the crystal blue waters of the Pacific. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries biologist Curtis Roegner is using it to look for a scanner on the sea floor.
“There. Found it,” he said. “OK, so here it’s recognizing that I’ve found one of our scanners and here’s its code number. It’s out there and we could talk to it. And now we could tell it to release from the bottom, pop-it-up and retrieve it.”