At a recent NOAA workshop, another participant gifted all of us these wonderful “hard hat” float ornaments. The perfect blend of nerdy oceanography and 3-D printing.
To explain what these are to the uninformed. Glass floats covered in protective plastic housings, aka hard hats, are used on a great variety of oceanographic gear, to provide flotation. These glass floats are often pressure rated to great depths, so that they can be placed on deep-sea gear that we eventually want to return to the surface. This includes landers, observation platforms positioned on the seafloor or benthic zone, dedicated to capturing a host of physical, chemical, or biological activities.
Andrew Davies, at University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, research includes many things but among them is building these landers. His wonderful group created and printed this wonderful ornaments.
