Ocean Sampling Day!

I've just learned that June 21st, 2014 is going to be the first-ever Ocean Sampling Day!

The Ocean Sampling Day (OSD) is a simultaneous sampling campaign of the world’s oceans and will take place on thesummer solstice (June 21st) in the year 2014. These cumulative samples, related in time, space and environmental parameters, will provide insights into fundamental rules describing microbial diversity and function and will contribute to the blue economy through the identification of novel, ocean-derived biotechnologies. We expect that these data will provide a reference data set for generations of experiments to follow in the coming decade. It could also function as starting point for regularly coordinated future OSDs.

This is exactly the type of work we hoped to prototype on our trip to the Sea of Cortez next week. It's also exactly the type of work we found out would be breaking the law. I think this is such a cool idea and project, and a great way to harness the power of the growing number of citizen explorers and scientists.

The Ocean Sampling day will take part on the 21st of June in 2014 and will be the biggest global effort in marine science that is carried out in one single day.
More information on: http://www.my-osd.org

ORIGINAL: Open ROV
by David Lang
December 30, 2013