Vashon is a census-designated place (CDP) in King County, Washington, United States. It covers an island alternately called Vashon Island or Vashon–Maury Island, the largest island in Puget Sound south of Admiralty Inlet. The population was 11,055 at 2020, up from 10,624 at the 2010 census and the size is 36.9 square miles (95.6 km2).
Physical oceanography is the study of physical conditions and physical processes within the ocean, especially the motions and physical properties of ocean waters.
A rubber duck or a rubber duckie is a toy shaped like a duck, that is usually yellow with a flat base. It may be made of rubber or rubber-like material such as vinyl plastic. Rubber ducks were invented in the late 1800s when it became possible to more easily shape rubber, and are believed to improve developmental skills in children during water play.
In oceanography, a gyre is any large system of ocean surface currents moving in a circular fashion driven by wind movements. Gyres are caused by the Coriolis effect; planetary vorticity, horizontal friction and vertical friction determine the circulatory patterns from the wind stress curl (torque).
A message in a bottle is a form of communication in which a message is sealed in a container and released into a conveyance medium.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a garbage patch, a gyre of marine debris particles, in the central North Pacific Ocean. It is located roughly from 135°W to 155°W and 35°N to 42°N. The collection of plastic and floating trash originates from the Pacific Rim, including countries in Asia, North America, and South America.
Beachcombing is an activity that consists of an individual "combing" the beach and the intertidal zone, looking for things of value, interest or utility. A beachcomber is a person who participates in the activity of beachcombing.
Friendly Floatees are plastic bath toys marketed by The First Years and made famous by the work of Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer who models ocean currents on the basis of flotsam movements. Ebbesmeyer studied the movements of a consignment of 28,800 Friendly Floatees—yellow ducks, red beavers, blue turtles, and green frogs—that were washed into the Pacific Ocean in 1992. Some of the toys landed along Pacific Ocean shores, such as Hawaii. Others traveled over 27,000 kilometres (17,000 mi), floating over the site where the Titanic sank, and spent years frozen in Arctic ice before reaching the U.S. Eastern Seaboard as well as British and Irish shores, fifteen years later, in 2007.
Hansa Carrier was a container ship. On 27 May 1990, en route from Korea to the United States, the ship encountered a storm which caused the loss of 21 40-foot cargo containers south of the Alaska Peninsula, near 48°N161°W. Five of these cargo containers contained 61,000 Nike shoes, each of which carried a unique serial number which later made it possible to clearly identify them as part of the spilled cargo. The "Great Shoe Spill of 1990" was one of the several occasions when shipping accidents have contributed to the knowledge of ocean currents and aided scientists and amateur researchers in their endeavours.
The second USS Mackinac (AVP-13) was a United States Navy Barnegat-class small seaplane tender in commission from 1942 to 1947 that saw service during World War II. After the war, she was in commission in the United States Coast Guard from 1949 to 1967 as the cutter USCGC Mackinac (WAVP-371), later WHEC-371, the second ship of the Coast Guard or its predecessor, the United States Revenue Cutter Service, to bear the name.
A flow tracer is any fluid property used to track the flow velocity and circulation patterns. Tracers can be chemical properties, such as radioactive material, or chemical compounds, physical properties, such as density, temperature, salinity, or dyes, and can be natural or artificially induced. Flow tracers are used in many fields, such as physics, hydrology, limnology, oceanography, environmental studies and atmospheric studies.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and introduction to Oceanography.
Gene Carl Feldman has been an oceanographer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) since 1985. His primary interest has been to try to make the data that NASA gathers from its spaceborne fleet of Earth observing instruments, especially those monitoring the subtle changes in ocean color, as scientifically credible, readily understandable and as easily available to the broadest group of people possible. He has been involved in a number of past and present NASA missions including the Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS), the Sea-Viewing Wide Field Sensor (SeaWiFS) and the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and along with the NASA Ocean Biology Processing group which he co-leads, been given the responsibility for designing, implementing and operating the data processing and mission operations component of ocean salinity mission called Aquarius, a space mission developed by NASA and the Space Agency of Argentina - Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE) that was successfully launched in June 2011 and began routine operations on December 1, 2011 and completed its prime mission in June 2015.
Marine chemistry, also known as ocean chemistry or chemical oceanography, is the study of the chemical composition and processes of the world’s oceans, including the interactions between seawater, the atmosphere, the seafloor, and marine organisms. This field encompasses a wide range of topics, such as the cycling of elements like carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, the behavior of trace metals, and the study of gases and nutrients in marine environments. Marine chemistry plays a crucial role in understanding global biogeochemical cycles, ocean circulation, and the effects of human activities, such as pollution and climate change, on oceanic systems. It is influenced by plate tectonics and seafloor spreading, turbidity, currents, sediments, pH levels, atmospheric constituents, metamorphic activity, and ecology.
Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them is a book by Donovan Hohn concerning 28,800 plastic ducks and other toys, known as the Friendly Floatees, which were washed overboard from a container ship in the Pacific Ocean on 10 January 1992 and have subsequently been found on beaches around the world and used by oceanographers including Curtis Ebbesmeyer to trace ocean currents.
Juan de Fuca Channel is a submarine channel off the shore of Washington state, United States and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
NOAAS George B. Kelez, previously NOAAS George B. Kelez, was an American research vessel in commission in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) fleet from 1972 to 1980. Prior to her NOAA career, she operated under the United States Fish and Wildlife Service′s Bureau of Commercial Fisheries from 1962 to 1970 as US FWS George B. Kelez and the National Marine Fisheries Service from 1970 to 1972 as NOAAS George B. Kelez.
Curtis A. Suttle is a Canadian microbiologist and oceanographer who is a faculty member at the University of British Columbia. Suttle is a Distinguished University Professor who holds appointments in Earth & Ocean Sciences, Botany, Microbiology & Immunology and the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. On 29 December, 2021 he was named to the Order of Canada. His research is focused on the ecology of viruses in marine systems as well as other natural environments.
NOAAS Oceanographer, originally USC&GS Oceanographer, was an American Oceanographer-class oceanographic research vessel in service in the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey from 1966 to 1970 and in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from 1970 to 1996. She was the second Coast and Geodetic Survey ship and first NOAA ship to bear the name Oceanographer. She served as flagship of both the Coast and Geodetic Survey and NOAA fleets.
NOAAS Discoverer, originally USC&GS Discoverer, was an American Oceanographer-class oceanographic research vessel in service in the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey from 1966 to 1970 and in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from 1970 to 1996. She was the second Coast and Geodetic Survey ship and first NOAA ship to bear the name Discoverer.
