This was my first time hearing about Argo floats, and the news that there are over 3900 of them drifting around, continuously gathering information about the upper 2 km of the world’s oceans is quite spectacular.  Have you checked out the maps online?  These things cover nearly all the open water on our planet.  In addition, the data collected from the Argo floats is available for anyone to use, free of charge.  Amazing!

Dr. Hamme and her colleagues have been using data from Argos equipped with oxygen sensors to compliment data they collect from shipboard measurements during 2-week cruises.  Although the shipboard data is more accurate, there is no beating the Argo data in terms of temporal and spatial coverage.  The ocean oxygen cycling research being conducted in Dr. Hamme’s lab is highly intriguing.

Dr. Hamme responded very well to questions, providing thorough answers to all.  I was slightly surprised at her response to the question about climate change, as (at least, this is what I heard) she indicated that her research doesn’t relate to or imply anything about climate change.  I feel like this is something that we don’t hear very often in the natural sciences anymore.  This research appears to be purely documentary, with no extrapolation into theories about climate change.

In fact, in regards to the slide showing global deoxygenation trends over the period of 1958-2015, Dr. Hamme made it clear that there is not yet an understanding of what the overall decline means, nor what has caused it, whether natural or anthropogenic.  The variability over time may reflect seasonal fluctuations, changes in water temperature, and even the lunar nodal cycle.

As Dr. Hamme mentioned, the diagrams in her presentation certainly are aesthetically pleasing, and if she hadn’t described the data they were illustrating, I might have just gotten lost in the pretty colours.  In seriousness, I appreciated that Dr. Hamme did an excellent job of explaining her plethora of charts, graphs and diagrams.  Furthermore, her passion and expertise were apparent, which always makes for a more captivating talk.

As an aside: although it’s exciting to know that there’s a long-term data set available that covers otherwise-unattainable reaches of the oceans, I was dismayed to read that Argo floats simply drift to the sea floor after their approximately 4-year lifespan is up.  I’m quite certain that those people clever enough to design these robotic data collectors could push themselves to develop a way for them to float and be retrieved after the battery runs low (maybe parts could even be reused).  I imagine that collecting them would be costly, but I feel it should be a part of the budget.  This reminds me of all the space junk that humans have created… as if we are so important that we deserve to leave trash in every place we explore.  I would think that scientists concerned with ocean life would prefer not to dump more garbage in our oceans.