March 2026 | Oceanography
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FIGURE B1-2. A screenshot from the video of the turtle detection project presentation identifies turtles
detected in the drone imagery.
colocate
The colocate module started as an OceanHackWeek project in
2019 and is now a module managed by the US Integrated Ocean
Observing System. The project was created to leverage the efforts
of many groups by serving valuable data via common ERDDAP
interfaces and a community-maintained index of such servers
and enabling a single set of search criteria to be applied across
servers. This module has a user interface that is used to search
ERDDAP servers in order to locate all oceanographic data within a
given region over a set time period (Figure B1-1).
BOX 1. EXAMPLE PROJECTS
Turtle Detection Using
Deep Learning
The 2021 Turtle Detection Using Deep
Learning project used an established
neural network segmentation model to
identify turtles in videos taken by drones.
This project demonstrates the power of a
diverse team, with someone providing the
dataset and scientific knowledge behind
it, some team members supplying exper
tise in data wrangling, and others offering
experience working with neural networks.
Together, in a short period of time, they
successfully built a model that identified
turtles (Figure B1-2).
41°N —
40°N —
39°N —
38°N —
37°N —
36°N —
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78°W
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76°W
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72°W
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74°W
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70°W
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68°W
FIGURE B1-1. Results from a colocate search. Different colored lines show
where available data have been found. Figure created from code available in
the colocate module.
PARTICIPATION AND ENGAGEMENT ACROSS
EVENT FORMATS
A virtual option for OceanHackWeek enabled the participation
of a more diverse and global community. Table S1 shows partici
pant demographics for each workshop, with larger percentages of
gender and ethnic/racial minorities, as well as international par
ticipants, in the years conducted as fully virtual or hybrid events.
Participants appreciated the virtual option, but despite the positive
feedback we received regarding the virtual/hybrid model, in the
last two years there was less interest in participating virtually, sug
gesting that participants currently prefer in-person interactions
and workshops.
Further, planning and running a hybrid workshop that aims to
provide equitable experiences to all the participants, irrespective
of their mode of participation, is challenging. To host a success
ful hybrid workshop requires a lot of additional infrastructure and
coordination (Rokem and Benson, 2024). For OceanHackWeek,
this includes our standard infrastructure plus a video conferencing