Award: OCE-1360666

The Chief Scientist Training (CST) cruise initiative was developed in light of concerns that ship utilization statistics indicate a decreasing trend in the participation of young oceanographers in the submission of proposals requesting shiptime, and also in serving as Principal Investigators or Chief Scientists on research cruises. Young scientists often lack knowledge about NSF support for seagoing research activities and UNOLS (the consortium of US academic institutions and National Laboratories organized to coordinate the federally funded ocean research fleet). Especially at non-ship operator institutions, junior faculty and students are often unfamiliar with the process for writing successful proposals with a shiptime component, and are unaware of NSF facilities (e.g. shared used equipment, vans and winches) that are available to support seagoing needs of individual researchers. The goal of this project was to reduce these hurdles perceived by young oceanographers by providing them with seagoing experience and research opportunities and with training in how to plan and execute a successful research cruise. The grant funded a 9-day south to north transect cruise across the western subtropical Atlantic from Barbados to Bermuda. Thirteen early career scientists, ranging from graduate students to assistant faculty, were selected as cruise participants. The participants were engaged in every aspect of the research cruise, from pre-cruise planning to cruise execution to post-cruise assessment and reporting. Participants organized telephone conferences for cruise planning and coordinating sampling activities and logistics. While on the cruise, participants carried out their individual sampling programs but also participated in daily meetings to collectively update the cruise plan and sampling activities, which provided them invaluable experience in the myriad factors and considerations that are essential for successful cruise execution. Marine techs and ship crew were also invited to the daily science meetings to discuss their roles in support of science, which promoted invaluable cross-training to all with the goal of facilitating improved scientist-ship support communications. Opportunities for one-on-one science and career discussions with the PI and the co-cruise mentor, a renowned seagoing biological oceanographer, provided invaluable mentoring. After the cruise arrived in Bermuda, a workshop was held at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) where participants learned in depth about NSF ship operations, UNOLS, NSF support available for seagoing research, oceanographic data management. The project overall had an enormous impact on the participants' understanding of the US research fleet and how to propose, organize and execute a seagoing research project from start to finish. The cruise activities also greatly increased confidence in planning a seagoing research project. Directly as a result of the training provided by this grant, several participants have recently submitted or plan to submit proposals that include ship time. The opportunities for sampling provide by the CST cruise also have made a large contribution to the individual research endeavors of many participants, contributing to their PhD thesis research, postdoc research and/or exploratory projects to development new funding. Several participants used the cruise opportunity to develop/test instrumentation and analytical methodologies that have the potential to translate to engineering or other science disciplines (e.g. optical instrumentation, molecular characterization of dissolved organic matter, genetic diversity of oil-degrading bacteria). Cruise participants have utilized data from samples collected on the cruise in proposals. One paper has been published and several papers are in preparation from studies enabled by this cruise opportunity. An important outreach and K-12 educational activity on the cruise was the cru...