Intra-America Seas:
The Intra-Americas Sea is a developing area of collaboration between AOML and RSMAS and several Caribbean countries. An operational and expanding data collection network has been established which has been incorporated into an analysis of regional change and contributed to global scale heat transport estimates. In addition, an industry (Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines), government (AOML), and university partnership has been formed to obtain oceanographic and meteorological data during weekly Miami-based cruises of the Explorer of the Seas, the world's largest cruise ship. The cruise track will transit the Florida Current and three northern Caribbean passages weekly, yielding a unique long-term, high-resolution data set for interdisciplinary climatological studies. The ship was substantially outfitted and arrived in Miami in October 2000 (Figure 22). It is one component of our collaborative effort to move shipboard oceanographic sampling into the New Millennium.