Brian Arbic, University of Michigan
Joseph Ansong, University of Ghana
Maddie Foster-Martinez, University of New Orleans
Tashiana Osborne, Johns Hopkins University
Title: Towards a truly global ocean science enterprise: Ocean Corps and the Coastal Ocean Environment Summer School in Ghana
Abstract:
Modeling and observing the global ocean environment requires a coordinated global effort. All around the world, coastal nations face many pressures including erosion due to sea-level rise, offshore oil drilling, increased shipping, overfishing, piracy, and others. Yet, as in most STEM disciplines, the representation of scientists from under-resourced regions in the global ocean science enterprise is sorely lacking. The time is ripe for developing more STEM partnerships between ocean scientists in higher-resourced and under-resourced nations.
With the above motivations in mind, we developed the
Coastal Ocean Environment Summer School in Ghana. We have been running the school for one week every August since 2015. The hosting Ghana institution alternates between Regional Maritime University (RMU), which trains West Africans for careers in shipping, port management, and other marine sector careers, and the University of Ghana (UG), which has a marine and fisheries sciences department. Over time the school curriculum has grown to include hands-on labs, a boat trip, instrument deployments, field trips to beaches and ports, and short research projects, in addition to lectures. From 2016-2021, about 100 West Africans and 15-30 Americans and Europeans have participated per year.
The Ghana school is an endorsed project of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. Building upon our experiences with the Ghana school and other exchange projects, we have developed the
Global Ocean Corps and Conveyor, a UN Decade endorsed global programme aimed at developing many more ocean science collaborations during this decade.