Helena Fos Serdà!!
“I’m a Marine Scientist from Catalonia, ready to begin a Master's degree in Meteorology soon. I studied Marine Sciences at the University of Barcelona. I've been interested in the marine environment all my life, and have some experience driving a boat.
Onboard the Pelican of London, I'll be participating in the project Ocean Awareness as a scientist in Residence, with citizen science, and will try to involve the other crew members including the young trainees. This way, we will be able to collect in situ data that will be sent to the interested organizations.
One of these tasks consists in reporting the clouds seen from the ship using the Globe Observer App by NASA. By doing this, we help NASA with ground-truthing, since some clouds can't be seen from a satellite because they get covered under other clouds on top. It's a very useful tool to learn about the clouds and very easy to use, I hope everybody on the ship feels like participating some time.
The other major task will consist in reporting cetacean sights during the voyage. For that, I'll be annotating the sea state and other related variables, together with the species of cetaceans found, whether they go in groups or alone, the location and time, their behaviour, if there are calves and juveniles or only adults, or other marine species associated.
This data will be sent to local organizations that study cetaceans. I'm sure this will attract the attention of all the people on the ship, so I think this is a great way to raise awareness of Ocean Sciences.”
Welcome aboard Helena!!
