by 
I was fortunate enough to speak with Bill Fanning, Ship’s Oceanographic Technician V, from the U.S. ENDEAVOR, who keeps all electronics up and running. It’s a job he fell into right after getting a Technical Engineering degree and he has been doing it ever since. His duties are not limited to monitoring all the ship’s computerized instruments but extend to setting up connections for scientists to have available data collection and transmission, and lending a hand anywhere on the ship including sweeping the floor if needed.
At one point he wrote a program after seeing something similar at an airport and modified it to suit the ship’s needs. See photo above. The black outline of the ship shows the course the ship has been set to, the yellow arrow shows the literal direction it’s going (meaning it takes into account the ship’s drift or if it’s moving in reverse), the smaller arrows (each arrow representing a different sensor placed in various spots on the ship) take into account wind direction. It also displays other scientific data collected by the ship such as temperatures of seawater and air, humidity, salinity, fluorometer (which measures production of photosynthesizing organisms), latitude and longitude, wind speed, and a few others.
Bill was more than happy to answer my random questions or call me over when he noticed I was trying to find out what he was doing. Thank you Bill for your patience and willingness to chat with me.
