OOI’s Tools Could Be Leveraged to Support Blue Economy
In an opinion piece published on March 2, 2022 in The Hill, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institutions’s President and Director Peter de Menocal and Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Director and Vice Chancellor for Marine Sciences and Dean of the School of Marine Sciences at the University of California San Diego Margaret Leinen laud OOI and Argo’s contributions to learning about the ocean:
New tools to observe and monitor the ocean, such as those developed for the NSF-funded Ocean Observatories Initiative and the multi-agency Argo program, could be leveraged to support the blue economy, a fast-growing sector worth an estimated $373 billion and supporting 2.3 million jobs in 2018 in the U.S. alone. The demand for faster, cheaper ocean observing technologies combined with data flowing from a comprehensive ocean observing system will create new markets, especially in those that quantify risk and uncertainty. Improved ocean data would also bolster national security by supporting our armed forces’ ability to make more informed strategic and tactical decisions on and in the ocean.
The full text of the opinion piece can be accessed here: