Introduction:

            Ships of Opportunity have been utilized since the mid 1750s when Ben Franklin began querying the Mail Ships operating between the Colonies and England about the most efficient routes to take to utilize the influence of the Gulf Stream.  Eighty years ago, in 1923, Sir William Herdman made the following (paraphrased) statement when describing the newly developing science of Oceanography:  “Oceanography is as yet scarcely known in most universities, and when it does come to be more generally recognized, it will probably be in the main as a research department, carrying on investigations partly by experiments in the university laboratories on shore, partly by observations on special expeditions at sea, and partly, no doubt, by data, obtained from commercial vessels making ocean traverses all on lines shown by the Musee Oceanographique at Monaco….”

            Advances in technology and international policy, such as the Telegraph and Morse Code (1837), wireless communication from ships at sea (1901), formation of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and World Weather Watch that created the initial Voluntary Observing Ship (VOS) Program (1961), Satellite Communications (1962), the first Expendable Bathythermograph collected from a VOS (1964) and Radio Facsimile (1980), methodically and consistently contributed to the improvement of both the accuracy and number of observations collected from the VOS Program which in turn significantly improved marine forecasting, oceanographic research and safety at sea.  Still, with all these improvements we generally only receive one observation from ships at sea for every ten observations received from land stations.  Globally on any given day there are only about 700 vessels successfully transmitting observations.  There are still vast data sparse regions of the world’s oceans essentially bereft of any subsurface or in situ surface observations at all.  It is in these data sparse areas that we need to focus our resources, but not at the expense of those routes we presently monitor but could monitor more efficiently.

            As technology improves and science sampling and monitoring requirements become more sophisticated we, in the VOS business, find ourselves competing more and more for fewer and fewer vessels that are able and willing to support our demands.  The modern VOSs are being driven by global economics and, as such, are being constructed to larger sizes and staffed by fewer people.  Additionally, they are being charted and re-routed continuously to keep pace with international cargo competition and the global market economy, all of which make our job more difficult when trying to maintain route coverage for a monthly or quarterly time series on those sections that have been monitored continuously for several years.

            The scientific community has recognized the VOS Program and its associated sampling successes for several years as a very cost efficient “tool” for monitoring vast areas of the world’s oceans.  The major scientific objectives of this enhanced sampling is to better measure and monitor seasonal to interannual prediction for El Nino Southern Oscillation events, understanding tropical ocean variability and predictability, as well as mid and high latitude intra-seasonal to interannual variability, Global and regional heat storage, heat and mass transport and circulation, ocean state estimation and short-range ocean forecasting, climatologies and climate change.  Consequently, as more and more science is being integrated into the VOS it is absolutely critical that coordination be improved, not only at the international level but nationally also.  If we have too many Principal Investigators (PIs) trying to visit the same vessels and soliciting different types of observations (albeit, equally important to the research community), we could find ourselves politely asked to leave the ship.  This is a very important consideration, as it requires a recognition and sensitivity between the scientific community and the maritime industry.

Every time we ask a VOS to collect some observation, we impact on that vessel.  Even if our system is automatic and requires no “hands on” care from the ship’s crew we still have an impact.  At a minimum, we require space and or storage for our equipment, power, or water, a wire run, a valve turned off/on at pre-determined times or locations or access to “uncontaminated” air.  Our scientific sampling requirements will always have some impact on the ship and its crew.  It is very important to remember that these VOSs are the homes for those that staff them, and when we come aboard asking for their help we sometimes forget that fact.  If we happen to be the fifth person that day to visit the ship and request something else from the Captain, our welcome could soon be used up.

For instance, if a particular scientist had a very special set of observations they wanted collected from a VOS for a short period of time to help answer a very interesting question and that vessel was already a reporting vessel supplying real-time operational observations critical to a marine forecast, we wouldn’t want to overburden the vessel at the sacrifice of the real-time observations for a short term, but interesting, special project.  This is where the coordination issue becomes very important.  The need to accommodate both the real-time operational requirement with the cutting edge science is where the Ship Of Opportunity Program Implementation Panel (SOOPIP) and Ship Observations Team (SOT) committees can help and should be contacted and kept in the loop as additional sampling programs come along.

It is hoped that this “SOOP Operations Guide” will provide some basic information on how to initiate and maintain a VOS Program in the most efficient and effective way possible.

Steve Cook, Ex-Chairman, SOOPIP

Literature Cited: Herdman, Sir William A. (1923):  Founders of Oceanography and Their Work – An Introduction to the Science of the Sea.  Edward Arnold & Co., London, 340 pp.