Oceanography | June 2022
WITH THIS SPECIAL ISSUE, I am pleased to be able to bring to
Oceanography readers something a little different from the usual fare.
Instead of focusing on the wonders of Earth’s ocean, articles in this
special issue ask you to consider how ocean scientists’ knowledge and
skills might apply to studies of ocean worlds beyond our own, such
as Jupiter’s moon Europa, Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan, and
Neptune’s moon Triton.
Articles discuss how ocean system science—a combination of mod-
eling, laboratory experimentation, and observations—can be used to
predict what processes may act within ocean worlds. Other articles con-
sider how studying extreme environments on Earth, such as the thick
ice at the poles or hydrothermal vents on the seafloor, may provide
insights into whether and where life may exist in other ocean worlds.
Questions posed are: What constitutes habitability in an ocean world
environment? What laboratory and modeling approaches can we use to
investigate habitability in ocean worlds that are currently inaccessible?
The panoply of sophisticated robotic platforms, samplers, and sen-
sors used to explore Earth’s deep ocean and ice sheets are valuable test-
ing grounds for technologies that might be useful to our planetary
science colleagues. The complex expeditions that deploy ocean instru-
ments, while still expensive, come at a far lower cost, and are completed
in far less time, than investigations conducted in extraterrestrial ocean
worlds. Some of the satellite and other airborne sensors refined over
decades to gather a wide variety of data concerning our ocean may be
used on upcoming missions to ocean worlds.
Ocean scientists have made great progress in understanding the
complex and interconnected geological, chemical, biological, and phys-
ical processes that act in Earth’s ocean by working collaboratively across
disciplinary boundaries. Close partnerships among ocean, Earth, cryo-
sphere, and other geoscientists and with our planetary science col-
leagues will no doubt provide additional insights into the workings of
Earth’s ocean—as well as those of oceans across our solar system.
ARTICLE DOI
https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2021.418
QUARTERDECK
OCEANOGRAPHY CONSIDERS
OCEANS ACROSS THE
SOLAR SYSTEM
Ellen S. Kappel, Editor
In this Oceanography section, contributing
authors share all of the relevant information
on a homemade sensor or instrument so that
others can build, or build upon, it. The short
articles also showcase how this technology
was used successfully in the field.
Call for Contributions
Oceanography guest editors Melissa Omand
and Emmanuel Boss are seeking contribu-
tions to DIY Oceanography. Contributions
should include a list of the materials and
costs, instructions on how to build, and any
blueprints and codes (those could be depos-
ited elsewhere). See Oceanography’s Author
Guidelines page for detailed information on
submission requirements.
https://tos.org/oceanography/guidelines
See the Collection
Go to the DIY Oceanography web page to
view the complete collection of articles.
• pySAS: Autonomous Solar Tracking
System for Surface Water Radiometric
Measurements
• An Optical Imaging System for Capturing
Images in Low-Light Aquatic Habitats Using
Only Ambient Light
• A Simple and Inexpensive Method for
Manipulating Dissolved Oxygen in the Lab
• The Pressure of In Situ Gases Instrument
(PIGI) for Autonomous Shipboard
Measurement of Dissolved O2 and N2 in
Surface Ocean Waters
• Inlinino: A Modular Software Data Logger
for Oceanography
https://tos.org/diy-oceanography