Morrowind1984

Lee M. is currently a cadet at the California Maritime Academy attending the Marine Engineering Technology program. He is currently enrolled in LIB100 where he is leanring how to manage and edit his wikipedia account.

File:Coralexhibitii.jpg

Farming coral on exhibit for the Monterey Bay Aquarium

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Wikipedia:Cheatsheet

Verifiability

Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources

Articles of Interest

Boiler (steam generator)

RMS Lusitania

Boston Molasses Disaster

SeaTrepid

Categories

Economizer

Superheater

Water-tube boiler

SeaTrepid International, LLC

SeaTrepid Internation is an engineering company focused on building and operating Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs). The company is located in Robert, Louisiana where the underwater robots are built and tested. SeaTrepid has its own deepwater pool where the robots are run through tests and modified to perform their desired operations. Not only are the robots used for scientific and government projects but are also used by private companies such as underwater surveyors, oil companies and ship wreck salvagers.

One of the bigger projects SeaTrepid participated in was the securing of the Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil spill. The Gulf oil spill was one of America's greatest natural disasters and compromised fisheries, jobs and the flora and fauna along the Gulf states. SeaTrepid was called in to use their sophisticated underwater robots to analyze the leaking well and potential find a fix to the problem. Connected by an electric-cable tether, these deep-sea machines were lowered in a cage and when close to the well a "pilot" would then take command and drive the ROV out and observe the broken pipe. Once a solution had been formulated, multiple ROVs, sometimes a dozen, worked together to cap the leaking oil well using precise movements of manipulator arms. The Gulf oil spill, or BP Disaster, errupted in April and was capped by ROVs in July. Officially the spill was secured and proclaimed "dead" in September. 4.9 million barrels of crude oil spilled into the Gulf sea.

(2010, June 3). Bid to curb oil spill in 'hands' of deepsea robots. Agence France Presse

Baskin, Brian. (2010, June 28). The Gulf Oil Spill: As storm veers away, robots ply sea depths. Wall Street Journal, p. A.10.

Henry Morgan

My topic for evaluating a Wikipedia article was on the privateer Henry Morgan. Both the Wikipedia article and the article found in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Maritime History provided detailed information on Morgan’s life and influence of piracy in the Caribbean. Contrary to what I was expecting, the Wikipedia article provided a more vivid description of Morgan’s life over a wider range of historical accounts. While both articles seem to be accurate, the OEMH had only one page of information and was very brief on the information covered. It also jumped around with its order of events and at times became confusing. The Wikipedia article did a great job covering his early life at the beginning and moved through his transition of being enslaved into his accounts of being an admiral of a fleet that raided Spanish settlements. Even though the article was short, the information from OEMH leaned towards a more scholarly point of view and stated the mere facts from reputable sources. The Wikipedia article did lose credibility as some of the information seemed to be hearsay and when looking at some of the sources cited, they themselves had no sources from where they were retrieving their information.

The works cited form both articles varied a good deal. In the article from OEMH, there were only three citations, two being books and one from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. All three of these sources are pretty reliable, one even being from Henry Morgan’s own personal surgeon, Alexandre Exquemelin. The Wikipedia article had 18 sources, seven were books, ten were journals with four being about finding his lost shipwreck and one was a film documentary. Although the most reliable sources of the group were the books and the documentary, as a group, they were only cited a total of six times throughout the article. There were also three notations in the article that stated a need for more sources to be cited. Some of the online journals themselves had no sources of information cited and gave no credibility to the facts that they were contributing. According to Wikipedia’s own guidelines some of the sources to this article are reliable but because of missing information or information with no citation, this article was not labeled a “Featured Article.”

The writing style of the Wikipedia article was clear and fluid and followed a chronological order in evaluating Morgan’s life. It grouped his life into easy to understand sections and transitioned from one era of his life into the other. A good portion of Henry Morgan’s life was undocumented and unclear but the article stated that and remained understandable.

I believe this article was full of valuable information and presented the topic of Henry Morgan clearly and factually. Many of the sources were reliable and gave quality facts. The only issues were that of the ambiguous sources and the information they provided.

Link: Henry Morgan

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

I have chosen the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s Wikipedia site as my article of research as it is categorized as a “stub page.” While the site does give a brief and accurate description about MBARI, its history and goals as a research institute, it lacks in-depth information and citations. Throughout the entire Wikipedia page there is only one citation and it refers to an expedition to the South Pacific, even though the one of the main focuses of MBARI is the researching of the local Monterey Bay Canyon. The article also has a section about the three different research vessels the institution uses yet does not have the ship’s Wikipedia pages linked to the main MBARI page. (Enter link) Not only can these pages be linked to MBARI’s page but they themselves are also stub pages and can have more citations and information added to them. The fleet at MBARI is also going through some changes and the MBARI.org website has a descriptive article about the ships that once served the scientific community and the new one that is to replace two of the older ships. MBARI’s website includes their own database for looking up previously published papers from their own scientists and expeditions and this would be a great link to have on the Wikipedia site. (http://www.mbari.org/news/publications/pubs.html)

Research Vessels

RV Western Flyer

RV Point Lobos

Until late last year, MBARI had three different ships at its disposal for the various projects that the institute worked on. The RV Western Flyer was the biggest and it sailed the Monterey Bay, Hawaii, Baja California and the South Pacific rim using its ROV Tiburon (now ROV Ed Ricketts) to explore the deep sea and all that inhabited the benthos there. The RV Point Lobos is a smaller vessel that is used for more local studies with its ROV Ventana. This vessel operates on an almost daily schedule in the Monterey Bay. The RV Zephyr is used to release and run AUVs and to manage and maintain research buoys around the central coast. Recently the RV Point Lobos and the RV Zephyr have been decommissioned after serving MBARI with over 30 years of service. A new ship, the RV Rachel Carson will be fully functional in the Spring of 2012 with the ability to launch the ROV Ventana and to run AUV’s and service research buoys. MBARI’s homepage has the logistics to each ship and this can be linked to the Wikipedia site to greatly add to the information provided.

News/Research Articles

JSTOR had a great article about a deep sea cephalopod (squid) found in the Monterey Canyon that uses bioluminescence as a form of ant predation. This article would do well in the Wikipedia article not only to describe some of the topics that MBARI covers but it is also an animal that most people can visualize, understand and appreciate, especially with a common name of the Vampire Squid.

“The archaic, deep-sea cephalopod Vampyroteuthis infernalis occurs in dark, oxygen-poor waters below 600 m off Monterey Bay, California. Living specimens, collected gently with a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and quickly transported to a laboratory ashore, have revealed two hitherto undescribed means of bioluminescent expression for the species. In the first, light is produced by a new type of organ located at the tips of all eight arms. In the second, a viscous fluid containing microscopic luminous particles is released from the arm tips to form a glowing cloud around the animal.”

Academic Search Elite provided an article from National Geographic that not only describes the operations that MBARI undergoes during routine voyages but also portrays what it would be like first person in the control room as scientists drive the ROVs and collect data. This might be one of the better articles to fully encompass what MBARI is all about without going into fine detail about one specific research topic.

“For a long moment it is quiet in the control room of Western Flyer, the state-of-the-art research vessel of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, where Robison, a bearded, graying Neptune, reigns as chief scientist. Next to the captain his word is law here, and he's seldom without something to say. But he now sits silently with his fellow oceanographers, peering at the mollusk's image on Flyer's bank of color monitors. There's only the sighing sound of the ocean heaving against the ship and, like a soft echo, the sound of the scientists' breathing.”

When looking at the database ABI/Inform Complete I found a good article that described how global changes can affect ecosystems even at the deepest realms of the ocean. This would be different than the previous two articles in that it doesn’t focus on one creature or organism nor does it describe the day to day operations of MBARI but it covers a broader spectrum of science. The information in this article also has meaning and influence to people on a wider range than just locals to Central California in that it describes deep sea changes found around the world.

“However, according to Ken Smith, a marine ecologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) and lead author of the recent PNAS article, changes in the Earth's climate can cause unexpectedly large changes in deep-sea ecosystems. Based on 18 years of studies, Smith and his coauthors show that such ecosystem changes occur over short time scales of weeks to months, as well as over longer periods of years to decades.”