Ocean Optics Class 2025

Welcome to the “Calibration & Validation for Ocean Color Remote Sensing” a.k.a. the Ocean Optics Class. This is an intensive, four-week, cross-disciplinary, graduate-level workshop in Optical Oceanography located at the University of Maine’s Darling Marine Center. This workshop is a continuation of the Optical Oceanography course first offered at the Friday Harbor Laboratories in 1985 and from 2001 to 2019 at the Darling Marine Center and in 2021 and 2023 at the Bowdoin College SCSC. Past graduates are many of today’s leaders in oceanography.

The major theme of the course is calibration and validation of ocean color remote sensing. The course will provide students with a fundamental knowledge of ocean optics and optical sensor technology that will enable them to make quality measurements, assess the uncertainties associated with the measurements, and compare these data with remotely sensed ocean color measurements and derived products. The course is sponsored by NASA, the University of Maine and Bowdoin College, with the goal of preparing a new generation of oceanographers trained in the use of optics to study the oceans.

Meg Estapa and Patrick Gray (UMaine; co-coordinators), Kelsey Bisson (NASA), Ivona Cetinić (NASA), Ali Chase (UW-APL), Sasha Kramer (MBARI), Wayne Slade (Harbor Branch) and Jeremy Werdell (NASA) with Alexander Bailess (OSU) as the teaching assistant and guest lectures by Optics Class alumni.