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09.08
Engineers: Your Oceans
Need You!
By John R. Platt
Are you looking for a "green"
job in an environmental field? How about a job
where you put your skills to work doing some
good for the world? Or maybe you're just looking
for a job that will challenge you. In any of
these cases, a career in oceanic engineering
could offer exactly what you are looking for.
"It's a vast field, and one that
is growing quite rapidly," says Dr. Graham
Shimmield, Executive Director of Bigelow
Laboratory for Ocean Sciences [www.bigelow.org].
"A lot of institutions now have dedicated marine
technology departments. And the people who use
the existing technologies and those who design
and develop them are talking together much
better than they used to, so the advances in the
industry are much more striking than they were
in the past five years."
An Interdisciplinary Field
Oceanic engineering involves
technologies and people from all fields of
engineering and computer science. The IEEE
Oceanic Engineering Society [www.oceanicengineering.org]
says the field addresses a wide range of
technological disciplines, such as electrical
and mechanical engineering, acoustics, energy
and power engineering, unmanned vehicle
technology, computer modeling and simulation,
communications, global positioning,
instrumentation, signal and image processing,
remote sensing, information processing and more.
"We clearly need engineers who
are experts in electronics," says Shimmield,
"but also people who can deal with the
challenges of working in the deep ocean,
including the high-pressure environment and the
corrosiveness of the sea water, and create tools
with long durability. We also need computer
specialists, people with knowledge of robotics,
hydraulics, communication systems, and people
who are attracted to an interdisciplinary way of
working.
"We also always need a core
group of engineers with can work in close
relationship with scientists in specific fields"
such as biology, chemical engineering, geology
and geophysics.
A Challenging Career
"It's a lot harder putting
something on the ocean floor and making it last
for three years than it is to put something on
the moon," says Shimmield. "Water is corrosive,
it's hard to send messages through, things live
in it... That's why there are interesting
engineering challenges."
Another big challenge, says
Shimmield, is biofouling, the growth of
microorganisms, plants, algae, and animals on
ocean-based devices. Designing equipment that
will keep working in these conditions is a
critical challenge for oceanic engineers.
"Oceanic technologies are also a
real development area," he says. "Engineers are
working on the development of autonomous
instruments. For example, the Slocum glider [www.webbresearch.com/slocum.htm],
which can spend several weeks in the field. At
the other end, you can have autonomous
instruments that are powered, or can just be put
in the sea, like Argo floats [www.argo.ucsd.edu],
which just drift around and send measurements
until they corrode and fall to the sea bed.
"Other instruments could sit on
the sea floor and work for years, measuring
things like the movement of oceanic plates,
geochemical measurements over long time periods,
or creating early-warning systems for
earthquakes."
Because of these challenges, "We
tend to see new technologies developing in the
marine environment rather than the other way
around," says Shimmield.
Preparing Yourself for a
Career in Oceanic Engineering
What skills make for a good
oceanic engineer? "Certainly a combination of
mechanical engineering and robotics and
communications," says Shimmield. "You also need
to know a fair amount about programming of
hardware and communication systems."
It also helps to have a mindset
that looks for answers. "Engineers are good at
developing new technology," says Shimmield, "but
I'm interested in people who can work with
scientists to understand a given problem and
come up with solutions that help pull it all
together."
Where the Oceans Need You
So, where exactly do
opportunities in oceanic engineering exist?
Areas of study can include
hot-button environmental issues such as climate
change, pollution, wave energy, and the study of
endangered species.
Communications engineers could
find themselves working with satellites, sonar
systems, and undersea communications.
Computer scientists are in high
demand for information processing, data fusion,
modeling, simulation and visualization.
Other opportunities include work
in remote sensing, propulsion, robotics, battery
and power systems, and more.
The possibilities, like our
oceans themselves, are almost endless.
John Platt is a marketing
consultant and journalist living in Maine. He is
a regular contributor to IEEE-USA
Today's Engineer.
Comments may
be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.
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