SeaKeepers Educational Initiative - The SeaKiosk

The International SeaKeepers Society is developing a new interactive SeaKiosk for explaining some essential ocean concepts and phenomena to the public.

Through compelling presentations, the SeaKiosk will explain in plain language the research undertaken by scientists, why data collection is so critical, and what the public can do to participate in restoring the oceans to good health.

The SeaKiosk will allow visualization of multiple data sets – including data from the SeaKeeper 1000™ monitoring system) – and show the relationship with rainfall, El Niño, and hurricanes.

The SeaKiosk will be a standalone communications station that can be installed in public places such as aquaria, piers, marinas, museums, visitor centers, and the lobbies of cruise ships and ferryboats.  It will also be suitable for schools, libraries, and at sites where data is being collected.

The SeaKiosk will have online access to download new data sets, images, and immediate news stories.

The SeaKiosk will give the viewer three options:

1. Beginner Level (no choices) - a 3D Earth turns at a fixed rate, preset data components are set to advance at a reasonable rate. A "tell me more" button takes one to the intermediate level.

2. Intermediate Level (high school) - Limited presets, data choices and vignettes, such as Hurricane Katrina, El Nino, and/or the Last 20 Days can be slected. A "tell me more" button takes one to the advanced level.

3. Advanced Level (enthusiast, scientist or docent) - A user driven version, which will enable the viewer to control the earth's orientation, rotation speed, or zoom into a particular region.

In addition to this data-driven component of the SeaKiosk, educational videos will be available for viewing on subject such as: pollution, currents, eutrophication and dead zones, algae and Oxygen, ocean acidification and hurricanes.

The ability to see Earth from space has forever changed our view of the planet. We are now able to look at the Earth as a whole, and observe how its atmosphere, oceans, landmasses, and life interact as global systems. Earth's atmosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere, and biosphere are dynamic, changing on timescales of days, minutes, or even seconds. Monitoring the Earth in near real time allows us to get an up to date picture of conditions on our planet.

The SeaKiosk will clearly illustrate how our climate, our weather, and the oceans are essentially one system, and explain this delicate balance in easy to understand concepts. The SeaKiosk will also deomonstrate how actions that affect one earth system component can directly affect another. But most importantly, the SeaKiosk will show how the health of the ocean is crucial to the security of our well-being, reveals how human activity has attributed to the seas' decline, and will provide the viewer with inspiration and suggest ways to reverse these trends.

To maximize the outreach of this education initiative, SeaKeepers plans to repackage the software, contact, and the data for global accessibility to the SeaKeepers website.

Stay tuned in the coming months as this exciting project takes shape and becomes a reality. If you would like to contribute directly to this program please contact us at seakiosk@seakeepers.org or call 954-766-7100 x 114.

We want to thank our Yacht Partner, Feadship and their award winning design and engineering team, De Voogt Naval Architects, for contributing their expertise to the design and construction of the hardware for the SeaKiosk.