Thirty university students and trainers from across Australia are getting the training experience of a lifetime, having taken to the seas for a circumnavigation of Tasmania aboard CSIRO research vessel RV Investigator.
The 10-day voyage is part of an innovative tertiary sea training program called CAPSTAN, the Collaborative Australian Postgraduate Sea-Training Alliance Network, which is being delivered in partnership with Australia’s national science agency, marine science industries universities and government.
The CAPSTAN program addresses a gap in how marine science education is delivered in Australia and will expose marine science students from 16 Australian universities to life and work onboard CSIRO’s advanced ocean research vessel.
Students will be involved in seafloor mapping and sediment sampling, and will also participate in the search for a historic shipwreck off the northwest coast of Tasmania.
“Nothing compares with hands-on learning. For future marine scientists, this is where the action happens — where theory is put into practice and where concepts sink in because students can observe the ecosystem with their own eyes,” said CAPSTAN Director, Dr Pier van der Merwe from the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies.
The CAPSTAN students come from a wide range of science and engineering disciplines, and two thirds of them are women.
The voyage departed Hobart on 8 March and will finish back in Hobart on 17 March.
Two more CAPSTAN training voyages are planned in the upcoming voyage schedules of RV Investigator, and the program lays the foundation for the further development of a national integrated training approach.
