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.