The Slocum Mission

Abstract

IT IS DIFFICULT to realize that twenty-five years have passed since I first came to the Slocum Mission Control Center on Nonamesset Island, one of the Elizabeth Islands, in 1996. I was a post-doc in physi- cal oceanography, and the Department of the Envi- ronment had just acquired the island from the descen- dants of a sea captain prominent in the China trade of the early nineteenth century. The government ac- quired Nonamesset to establish the World Ocean Observing System [WOOS], a facility capable of monitoring the global ocean, using a fleet of small neutrally-buoyant floats called Slocums that draw their power from the temperature stratification of the ocean. Nonamesset Island was chosen partly because it is isolated from the mainland of Cape Cod, but mostly because it is close to the Woods Hole Oceano- graphic Institution, the Marine Biological Labora- tory. and a thriving scientific community. Nestling