The SA Agulhas II, the government-owned polar research vessel, was set to arrive in Cape Town this morning after its 10-day educational voyage had to be shortened by a day due to bad weather.
The floating university left East Pier, Table Bay, on 5 July with 41 postgraduate students selected from 15 South African universities and technikons. The students are studying ocean dynamics, life in the sea, marine instrumentation and data analysis on board the vessel.
Associate professor Isabelle Ansorge of the Department of Oceanography at the University of Cape Town is directing the programme. Tahlia Henry, a former Cape Peninsula University of Technology student, is the SEAmester co-ordinator.
SEAmester - SA's Class Afloat - aims to introduce marine science as an applied and cross-disciplinary field to students who have shown an affinity for these core science disciplines. Students will be able to combine theoretical classroom learning and the application of this knowledge through ship-based, hands-on research, working alongside specialist scientists in internationally relevant research activities. Some of these students will be sailing, and perhaps even seeing the ocean, for the first time.
The Department of Science and Technology (DST) sponsored the voyage on the SA Agulhas II, which is owned by the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA), to increase awareness of the ocean's physical and ecological response to climate change, and to inspire and attract students into the marine sciences.
SEAmester has been running parallel to the Agulhas System Climate Array (ASCA), an international oceanographic project with partners from SA (via the SA Environmental Observation Network), the US and the Netherlands, and funding support from the DST and DEA, the US National Science Foundation and the Royal Dutch Institute for Sea Research.
ASCA is designed to provide long-term observations of Agulhas Current volume, heat and salt transport and its variability from mesoscale (eddies), through seasonal to inter-annual timescales.
The ASCA shelf and tall moorings were deployed in 2015 and extend 200km offshore through the core of the Agulhas Current, with current and pressure recording inverted echo sounder measurements extending the array to 300km offshore.
The SEAmester/ASCA cruise was supposed to provide valuable ocean data to better understand the role of the Agulhas Current in a global ocean and provide an exciting scientific background for SEAmester to engage in, not only in the science, but with the ASCA core scientists.
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