University of Maine marine scientist Mary Jane Perry has been at the forefront of float and underwater glider-based ocean exploration for more than a decade. But her recent research, a collaboration with colleagues from the University of Washington, Dalhousie University and a number of other institutions in the U.S. and Europe, has the potential to change the face of oceanography. Perry recently received a nearly $620,000 special creativity award from the National Science Foundation–for a total of $1.6 million–to extend her autonomous study of carbon fluxes in the North Atlantic spring bloom through 2012. The carbon dioxide uptake in the North Atlantic accounts for about a quarter of the global total, and the spring bloom is an important part of that. Perry and her colleagues are exploring a way to monitor the bloom that is more effective and far less cost-prohibitive than current methods.
