PhD Studentship: Sensing the Ocean Through Surfing: A New Wave in Ocean Observation

Understanding how the ocean is changing requires observations that are increasingly extensive in both space and time. However, conventional oceanographic observations rely on relatively expensive and specialised instruments deployed from research vessels, autonomous platforms or fixed observing stations. These approaches provide high quality measurements, but their cost and logistical requirements limit the spatial coverage of observations, particularly in dynamic coastal environments. At the same time, millions of people interact with the ocean every year through recreational activities such as surfing, creating a largely untapped opportunity for environmental observation. Using surfers and surfboards as a trial group, this project will investigate whether recreational platforms can be transformed into low-cost platforms for ocean observation. It builds directly on previous research developing low-cost environmental sensing technologies and will combine expertise in biological and physical oceanography, engineering and environmental sensing.

The project will develop and integrate miniaturised sensors capable of measuring key environmental properties while a surfboard is being used, and investigate how these observations can be collected, quality controlled and combined to produce useful environmental datasets. The research will address four key challenges. First, how can low-cost environmental sensors be robustly integrated into recreational platforms like surfboards without affecting their normal use? Second, how accurately can these sensors measure environmental properties under the challenging and highly variable conditions experienced during recreational activities? Third, how can observations collected opportunistically by multiple recreational users be integrated to provide meaningful information about spatial and temporal variability in coastal environments? Fourthly, what are the key motivators recreational water users have to participate in data collection. The student will work across sensor development, experimental testing, field observations, data analysis, and social citizen science, supported by expertise within the University of Exeter and University of North Carolina Wilmington, and through collaboration with a UK surfboard manufacturer and open-hardware company.

Engineering expertise will support sensor Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Doctoral Landscape Award integration and platform design, while marine science expertise will underpin the interpretation and validation of the observations. The project will also explore approaches for combining these new observations with existing satellite, autonomous and conventional oceanographic datasets. The research has the potential to establish a new model for distributed and accessible ocean observation, complementing existing observing systems rather than replacing them.

Success in this project will show how a whole range of recreational platforms could provide observations in locations and at frequencies that are difficult or expensive to achieve using conventional approaches, while simultaneously engaging ocean users in environmental monitoring. The project will provide the foundation for a longer-term research programme exploring how emerging technologies and everyday platforms can be harnessed to increase our ability to observe the ocean. Ultimately, it aims to demonstrate that the people who use the ocean can also help us observe it, creating new opportunities to understand and monitor rapidly changing coastal environments.