The OpenCTD: Open-source Oceanography for Everyone
Below is a transcript and slides from the above talk, delivered at the October 19, 2023 GOSH Community Call.

Good afternoon, good evening, and good morning, and thank you for inviting me.

Access to the tools of science is rarely equitable, and nowhere is this inequality of access more pronounced than in the ocean sciences, where all but a few entities have the capital to mount major oceanographic research campaigns. I come from the world of deep-sea ecology, where our budgets can quickly climb into the tens of millions of dollars. But even small-scale coastal research can be stymied by the need for vessels, equipment, and instruments, access to which is often controlled by research institutions. For ocean knowledge seekers who lack academic credentials or significant financial resources, accessing the fundamental tools of marine science can represent an insurmountable barrier.
This is a huge problem. As the need to understand the dramatic changes happening both at the surface and beneath the waves accelerates, barriers to access that precludes the participation of the full breadth of ocean stakeholders erodes our potential to understand, anticipate, and mitigate those changes.
I believe that the ocean belongs to everyone and that the tools to study the ocean should be available to anyone with the curiosity and motivation to pursue that inquiry.
Chief among those tools is the workhorse of oceanography, the CTD.
