November 2003 Teacher Workshop

"Right Whale Ecology at the Intersection of Science, Technology, and Conservation"

Dr. Mark Baumgartner is an Assistant Scientist in the Biology department of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He studies the foraging behavior and ecology of whales, and the formation and location of the patches of plankton that whales feed on. In this workshop he talked about his research on location of copepod patches, and the kinds of technology and tools he uses to track and observe the whales and their food. He discussed the need to understand how and where the North Atlantic right whale locates its food, in order to know how to save this endangered species from extinction.

Resources for "Right Whale Ecology at the Intersection of Science, Technology, and Conservation"

Dr. Mark Baumgartner, WHOI, Biology Department

http://whale.wheelock.edu/Welcome.html
Whalenet, run from Wheelock College

http://www.rightwhaleweb.org/
The North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium website

http://www.rightwhales.org/
Information on Right Whales from International Fund for Animal Welfare

http://www.neaq.org/scilearn/research/rtwhale.html
New England Aquarium Right Whale research group

http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/marinebio/plankton.html
plankton and how it’s sampled and identified, from Scripps Institute of Oceanography

http://oceanlink.island.net/oinfo/foodweb/foodweb.html
Information on pelagic ocean food webs from OceanLink, Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre, British Columbia. About the importance of the marine environment and its conservation through interactive, electronic media.

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/brp/ResWhale.html
why the Cornell Ornithology Lab studies whale sounds

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/brp/ARUMarine.html
One way the Cornell lab studies whales, with hydrophones

http://atoc.ucsd.edu/
Information on the Acoustic Thermometry of Ocean Climate (ATOC) experiments

http://www.learner.org/jnorth/search/RightWhale.html
Journey North, from Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary; a lot of information on the characteristics, life history, and conservation of right whales

http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v414/n6863/full/414537a_r.html
Important paper in the journal Nature about the North Atlantic Right Whale demographics and predicted times to extinction under current circumstances

http://octopus.gma.org/surfing/ocean/migration.html
Gulf of ME aquarium’s marine mammals pages, with activities on migration of whales correlated with sea surface temperature and on feeding in toothed and baleen whales

http://omp.gso.uri.edu/dosits/teacher/activity/activity.htm#hydro
Detailed instructions on how to build a hydrophone to listen to underwater sounds, from the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography

"Designing a New Vehicle for Deep Sea Exploration and Research"

Andrew Bowen, Research Specialist in the Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering department at WHOI, is currently working on a new type of underwater research tool for exploring the very deepest parts of the ocean, called a “hybrid remotely operated vehicle”, or HROV. He spoke about the design concept for a vehicle that can operate either as an ROV (remotely operated vehicle), with a new, lightweight, fiber-optic power-and-data-carrying tether, or as an AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) to carry out pre-programmed operations without a tether. He also discussed the extreme conditions found in the deep sea and how vehicles are designed to function under those conditions.

Resources for "Designing a New Vehicle for Deep Sea Exploration and Research"

Andrew Bowen, WHOI, Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering Department

I. Jason

www.whoi.edu/marops/vehicles/jason/jason_operations/index.html
Jason overview

www.nationalgeographic.com/education/lesson_plans/ballard912.html
a site from National Geographic that gives a few activities for students about the use of the Remotely Operated Vehicle Jason, mostly involving researching Jason and the submersible Alvin on-line and comparison of capabilities

www.whoi.edu/marine/ndsf/vehicles/jason/van_main.html
Jason virtual control van

hwww.dsl.whoi.edu/
DSL lab pages

hwww.whoi.edu/marops/vehicles/jason/index.html
Jason II home page

II. the Deep Sea

www.onr.navy.mil/focus/blowballast/default.htm
Office of Naval Research teachers’ pages, on diving and submersibles

www.coast-nopp.org/
Consortium for Oceanographic Activities for Students and Teachers

www.uncw.edu/aquarius/education/lessons.html
Aquarius education site, with lessons on pressure, buoyancy, light in the ocean, including physics and mathematics aspects

www.thetech.org/robotics/index.html
The Tech museum robotics site, link to classroom activities

III. Engineering and Robotics

http://handsonprojects1.hypermart.net/merchant.mv?Screen=SFNT&Store_Code=H
Future scientists and engineers of America

http://k12science.ati.stevens-tech.edu/
The Center for Improved Engineering and Science Instruction’s site, with classroom projects, standards, and links. Two activities are online activities about ocean currents and conditions.

www.uncw.edu/aquarius/education/lessons.html
Aquarius education site, with lessons on pressure, buoyancy, light in the ocean, including physics and mathematics aspects

www.prek-12engineering.org/
a free resource for educators and administrators who are looking to integrate engineering concepts and activities into prek through twelfth grade classrooms. The activities available on the site are linked to the new Massachusetts Science and Technology/Engineering Curriculum Frameworks. Many of the standards in these frameworks are closely related to the nationally recommended standards for technological literacy by the International Technology Education Association (ITEA.)

http://robotics.nasa.gov/matrix.htm
NASA’s site for Robotics Education Project (REP), dedicated to encouraging people to become involved in science and engineering, particularly robotics and maintaining a web site clearinghouse of robotics education information.

www.rec.ri.cmu.edu/education/roboticscurriculum/index_to_robotics.htm
good robotics site at Carnegie Mellon University

www.mos.org/sln/Leonardo/InventorsWorkshop.html
from Boston Museum of Science, about invention and simple engineering