Oceanography for the Visually Impaired.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Amy Bower is a physical oceanographer and senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts--she has also been legally blind for 14 years. Through her partnership with the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts, the oldest K-12 school for the visually impaired in the United States, students have the unique opportunity to learn from a practicing research scientist who shares their particular disability. This article describes the project, called OceanInsight, which provides visually impaired students with an interactive way to study oceanography, including field trips to Woods Hole and school visits by Bower and other WHOI scientists (see background). As a Perkins middle and high school science teacher involved in OceanInsight, I was able to join Bower on a research expedition to the Labrador Sea, which lies between Canada and Greenland. With the help of technology, my students at Perkins communicated with us while we were on the ship. We continue to follow Bower's research on the project's website (see On the web at the end of this article), and my students participate in corresponding classroom projects. Field trips to Woods Hole In the first year of the OceanInsight partnership, which began in the fall of 2006, Woods Hole welcomed our students into their community and provided them with hands-on experience in oceanography. At the WHOI exhibit center, students handled whale bones usually covered by display cases and examined small sea creatures with aquarium staff. They marveled at a Styrofoam cup that had shrunk to the size of a thimble from the pressure in the ocean depths and listened to the sounds of dolphins and whales. Students also got to sit in a model of the deep-ocean research submersible Alvin. In the research labs, students examined equipment that was under construction by the project's engineers, including profiling floats, which are 1.5 m tubes containing sensors that measure ocean temperature and salinity, and current meters that measure and record the speed and direction of the ocean water. This equipment would be used to collect data on Bower's research expedition to study the Irminger a group of eddies in the Labrador Sea (see More on Irminger Rings, p. 32). During these field trips, our students also had the opportunity to explore the R/V Knorr--the same research vessel I would later sail on with Bower and her crew. After climbing the steep stairs between the decks and visiting the scientists' sleeping quarters, students ate bag lunches in the mess hall. In the ship's lab areas, students checked out the lab tables with raised edges, similar to a very large cafeteria tray, that were designed to keep equipment from slipping off while on the high seas. Then, the group moved onto the stern, where large cranes were moving equipment on and off the ship, and examined the chains used to fasten equipment to the deck and to moor the ship in the harbor. The R/V Knorr is a typical research vessel. While aboard, Bower uses a white mobility cane to give her information as she moves about, just as our students did on this visit. A person who is blind can detect doorways, drop-offs, stairs, and turns using a mobility cane. Special accommodations on this ship would include letting a visually impaired person know if a piece of equipment is being moved and storing equipment in an organized, predictable way (which scientists like to do anyway!). Scientists in the classroom During several visits to Perkins in the fall of 2006, Bower met with introductory high school physics and chemistry classes (grades 9-11), as well as middle school science classes. These visits occurred just a few weeks after the students' first field trip to WHOI. Bower described her field and office work at Woods Hole to students and introduced them to the basic principles of her research and her September 2007 expedition to study the Irminger Rings in the Labrador Sea. …

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