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FEBRUARY 2008 | PORT VICTORIA, SEYCHELLES TO CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA 
"Oceanographic Research Probes Launch from The Scholar Ship"

Staff members of The Scholar Ship Research Institute launched 23 temperature probes, or XBTs (expendable bathythermographs, which measure temperature and depth), off the ship en route to South Africa. Students also participated in each deployment, which lasted about 15-20 minutes and showed real-time temperature readings of the water down to a depth of 760 meters.

"The XBT launch was a great opportunity for students to participate in the important research taking place on the vessel every day,” says Dana Vukajlovich, research outreach coordinator onboard The Scholar Ship.

The purpose of the launch was to study the temperature structure of the Agulhas Current, a major surface current that affects regional climate and weather patterns, which in turn bears important scientific implications pertaining to climate change and the prediction of major weather patterns such as cyclones, hurricanes, and monsoons.
Data gathered from the launch will add to a data set previously gathered by another vessel and give researchers a sense of how the current has changed in the past few years.

“The Indian Ocean is among the least studied in the world, so our trajectory through it was a prime research opportunity,” says Vukajlovich. “Due to the large expense required to enlist dedicated research vessels to study the many oceans we are traversing, conducting research onboard The Scholar Ship is ideal. Now that we have successfully used this research capability onboard the ship, we hope to conduct further study along other routes on our voyage.”