Founded 2009 | ||
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Location Palo Alto, California, United States of America Website Schmidt Ocean Institute home page Founders Eric Schmidt, Wendy Schmidt Profiles | ||
Schmidt ocean institute timor sea rov highlights
The Schmidt Ocean Institute is a non-profit private foundation focused on oceanography, founded in March 2009 by Eric Schmidt and Wendy Schmidt. The Institute’s goal is to advance ocean exploration, discovery, and knowledge using technological advances, data-rich observation and analysis, and open sharing of information.
Contents
- Schmidt ocean institute timor sea rov highlights
- Sneak peek schmidt ocean institute s 4500 m rov live with mate
- Research vessels
- Activities and expeditions
- References
The Schmidt Ocean Institute, which was previously known as the Schmidt Research Vessel Institute, has been awarded grants from the Schmidt Family Foundation for the purpose of owning and operating scientific research vessels.
Sneak peek schmidt ocean institute s 4500 m rov live with mate
Research vessels
The Schmidt Ocean Institute has operated two research vessels, RV Lone Ranger and RV Falkor.
Lone Ranger, a 255-foot former ocean tug, was donated to the Institute by Peter B. Lewis in 2009 and was operated by the Institute in various Atlantic Ocean research cruises. Lone Ranger was decommissioned from the Schmidt Ocean Institute scientific fleet in 2012.
Lone Ranger's successor is RV Falkor, a 272-foot former German fisheries protection vessel purchased from the German government in 2009. Between 2009 and 2012, Falkor underwent an extensive refit at the Peters Schiffbau shipyard in Germany to convert it into a globally capable oceanographic research vessel.
The refit cost $60 million, and in addition to its own equipment, Falkor will at times also carry equipment from other oceanographic organizations, such as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s Nereus underwater vehicle, for exploring the Mariana Trench.
Research proposals for time aboard Falkor are peer reviewed by independent scientists. Program managers favor open data projects, but data sharing is not a requirement. If a project is accepted, the ship time is free to the researchers, but they must find additional funding for their salaries and post-cruise science.
Falkor is intended to be a long-term global resource, integrating the latest technology into ocean exploration. Schmidt Ocean Institute program managers have encouraged scientists from around the world to apply for ship time; although the first cruises scheduled will be led by US and Canadian researchers, researchers from 23 countries applied in the most recent round of research proposals.
Activities and expeditions
The Schmidt Ocean Institute has undertaken multiple research projects in collaboration with organizations including the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, the Center for Coastal & Ocean Mapping Joint Hydrographic Center, IFREMER, the Center for Environmental Visualization, the Marine Science and Technology Foundation, and various universities and oceanographic research institutions.
Schmidt Ocean Institute researchers and research vessels have studied remote coral reef conditions at the Kiritimati atoll, deep-water coral habitats using ROVs, Atlantic marine pollutants and biofuel candidates in the North Atlantic Gyre and Sargasso Sea, and the long-term effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
In March 2013, a team aboard RV Falkor started conducting a multibeam mapping survey of the Campeche Escarpment in the Gulf of Mexico, which may provide insight into geological records for the Chicxulub crater.
During field trials in July 2012 of the multibeam echo sounding equipment on RV Falkor, the team aboard discovered the wreck of lost polar expedition ship Terra Nova off the southern coast of Greenland.