by 
Good evening, my name is Chris Hintz. I am faculty in the Marine Science Program at Savannah State University and I am “Chief Sci” on the July R/V Hugh R. Sharp (UDel) STEMSEAS cruise. I have been a sea-going oceanographer for just shy of 20 years and, as with many of my colleagues, going to sea is one of the best parts of what we do.
At Savannah State University we strive to give our undergraduate and Master’s students the experiences that will make them successful in their career. Going to sea, getting experience doing field science, and learning the practical skills of seamanship are fundamental to this goal.
Every time I take students to sea the opportunity arises to show real science, demonstrate any number of phenomena that we can only talk about (really hand wave) in the classroom. It doesn’t have to be purely oceanography, many times its meterology, or environmental policy, or fisheries management, or just basic physics.
I have always been enamored with the color of the ocean. From my very first research cruise, the blue that I witnessed so many years ago still captures my imagination today. It is a color that is so very hard to put into words, to truly convey the ocean’s natural beauty. Photography rarely captures this soulful experience when one is out in ‘blue water.’
We talk about this in class. It is an important concept that I present in every sophomore introductory oceanography through graduate general oceanography course. The physics of light directly affects biology, which in turn controls chemistry, and geology.
Fundamentally it is a very simple concept, SCUBA divers experience it every time they explore the depths. Descending below a few meters in the water column, colors dull, vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows fade away, absorbed by the water column in favor of blues and greens that pass freely through. The rays of the sun filtered by the ocean, reflect off floating particles or plankton and make their way back to the surface where we see only a narrow band of wavelengths that return, giving us the extraordinary blue color of the ocean.
The only word I can use to describe this color is ‘deep.’ It is such a deep blue that cannot be seen in coastal environments because shallow water does not fully remove the green wavelengths of light. Moreover, coastal water (whether natural or impacted by man) is often full of sediments or algae particles that block much of the light. But even very clear and pristine (mostly tropical) shallow water will reflect off the bottom sediments/sands altering the light, yielding tropical turquoise or aquamarine beauty. Classically gorgeous in their own right, these coastal waters are just not the deep blue of the open ocean that I long to see each time I head to sea.
This is only one of a hundred examples why STEMSEAS is an amazing program for the students. I get to share with my students, and they get to see with their own eyes, blue water that they can try to describe to their parents, loved-ones, friends, but only because they experienced it themselves. They understand the rigors of 12-, 14-, 16-, 18-hour days on the water, working in a laboratory that constantly sways to will of the ocean, and they begin to understand when I say, ‘Science Happens!’ They will collect the data and discuss
the phenomena out here, first hand, and will already understand before I present (by waving my hands) to my class. They will appreciate the sacrifice previous oceanographers made to learn what we do know, and the sacrifice they will need to make to continue learning what we don’t know.
AND they will start collecting the sea stories that they will tell to future generations, each time the story just a little larger than the last time.
