Abstract
Many luminaries of oceanography have articulated the problem of adequately sampling a multiplicity of
interdisciplinary ocean processes. Progress has accelerated within the past two decades as societal and
naval interests in monitoring and predicting the state of the ocean environment has heightened.
Oceanographers are capitalizing on a host of new platform and sensing technologies. Some recent
programs contributing to improved 4-dimensional open and coastal ocean multi-disciplinary observations
are used to highlight the development of new integrated optical, chemical, and physical measurement
systems that can be deployed from stationary and mobile platforms to telemeter data in near real-time or
real-time. For example, the NOPP O-SCOPE and MOSEAN projects have developed and tested several
optical and chemical sensors in deep waters off Bermuda and Hawaii, at OWS 'P' in the North Pacific
Ocean, and in coastal waters off Santa Barbara and Monterey, California. Most of the testing for these
projects has been conducted using moorings; however, NOPP instrumentation is also being used on mobile
platforms including AUVs, profiling floats, and gliders. Progress in adequately sampling the temporal and
spatial variability of selected ocean 'sampling volumes' using multi-platform, multi-disciplinary sampling
is described using examples from selected recent programs.
