Gene Carl Feldman has been an oceanographer at NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center since 1985. His primary interest has been to try and make the data that NASA gathers from its spaceborne fleet of Earth observing instruments, especially those monitoring the subtle changes in ocean color, as scientifically credible, readily understandable and as easily available to the broadest group of people possible. He has been involved in a number of past and present NASA missions including the Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS), the Sea-Viewing Wide Field Sensor (SeaWiFS) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and along with the NASA Ocean Biology Processing group which he co-leads, been given the responsibility for designing, implementing and operating the data processing and mission operations component of upcoming ocean salinity mission called Aquarius, a space mission developed by NASA and the Space Agency of Argentina - Comision Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE).

Prior to his work with NASA, his experience included extended service (3 1/2 years) as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Western Samoa, where among other things he was involved in fish farming, sea turtle conservation, boat building and village fisheries development and work with the NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service as a fisheries biologist in Seattle, Alaska and San Diego. These experiences led to his becoming a Graduate Research Fellow at the Marine Sciences Research Center, State University of New York at Stony Brook, where for his dissertation, he used satellite and oceanographic data to study the variability in, and the relationship between, the physical and biological processes in the ocean. He earned his Ph.D. in Coastal Oceanography in 1985.

He is the author and co-author of numerous publications, and has also participated in and contributed to a large number of programs including The Jason Project, Public Broadcasting, the BBC, the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Society, the Cousteau Society, the Smithsonian Institution, and U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment. Most notably, he has been involved in using the World Wide Web (since January, 1994) and other emerging technologies to reach out to a wider audience. He was the creator of the JASON Project Home Page, which in collaboration with Dr. Robert Ballard, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who led the team that found the wreck of the R.M.S. Titanic, and The JASON Foundation for Education, pioneered the use advanced interactive telecommunications to educate and excite students about science and technology.

He has had a number of productive collaborations with the Smithsonian Institution including participation and the documentation of the Smithsonian's expedition to New Zealand. Working with the Institution's Office of Environmental Awareness, he helped create the Smithsonian's first electronic exhibition, "Ocean Planet Online", which has been called one of the most comprehensive and technologically advanced exhibitions of its kind. In appreciation for this work, the Smithsonian Institution awarded him the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal which placed him in some.

Recent projects have included work on a one-hour documentary including a special interview with Walter Cronkite for the Discovery's Science Channel, telling the story of the Ben Franklin, a research submersible built by the Grumman Aerospace Corporation that at 8:56 P.M. July 14, 1969, carrying six brave aquanauts, slipped beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Palm Beach, Florida on a mission to explore the secrets of the Gulf Stream. This longest privately-sponsored undersea experiment which NASA took part in, ended more than 30-days and 1,444 nautical miles later, when the Franklin and its crew surfaced some 300 miles south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, at 7:58 A.M. August 14, 1969. By a quirk of fate, this expedition took place during the same week in July 1969 as the Apollo 11 mission to land two astronauts on the moon, and these two missions ended a decade of exploration, unsurpassed and as yet unequaled in human history.

References

• Michael J. Behrenfeld,Robert T. O'Malley,David A. Siegel,Charles R. McClain,Jorge L. Sarmiento,Gene Carl Feldman,Allen J. Milligan,Paul G. Falkowski,Ricardo M. Letelier and Emmanuel S. Boss " Climate-driven trends in contemporary ocean productivity". Nature 444, 752-755, 2006

• Charles R. McClain, Gene Carl Feldman and Stanford B. Hooker " An overview of the SeaWiFS project and strategies for producing a climate research quality global ocean bio-optical time series". Deep Sea Research Part II: Topical Studies in Oceanography Volume 51, Issues 1-3, January-February, 2004

• Ocean Color documents from various authors available from the " OceanColor Web"

References

1. In Search of Giant Squid
2. pretty impressive company

External links

• NASA Biographical Webpage
• NASA's OceanColor Web
• Monitoring the Earth from Space with SeaWiFS
• SeaWiFS 10 Year Gloabl Biosphere Animation
• Climate Warming Reduces Ocean Food Supply
• Dr. Betsy Pugel interviews Dr. Gene Carl Feldman for “Straight from the Scientist’s. Mouth”
• From Sea to Shining Sea - A Film Treatment for a Documentary about the Ben Franklin