David Cervantes

I joined the Sustainable Development research group at the Institute of Marine Research in 2017 as a chemical oceanographic technician and since then have taken responsibility for the management and work being performed in the CTD water chemistry lab on board RV Dr. Fridtjof Nansen to support capacity development and high quality data collection alongside our partner countries of the EAF-Nansen Programme. Since then my knowledge and analytical skills have also expanded to physical oceanography, allowing me to better understand the oceanographic system as a whole and be a multi-faceted oceanographer in my research group. My responsibilities include performing and training expedition participants on chemical, physical and meteorological analyses and sampling procedures for various parameters such as pH, total alkalinity, chlorophyll a, dissolved oxygen, salinity, nutrients, ocean currents and weather observations. I am also involved in writing analytical protocols, testing new methods and instrumentation, improving data processing, quality assurance, producing survey reports and installing and maintaining instruments. In the last few years my programming skills in R have also increased, enabling me to further streamline data processing, quality checking and scientific figure producing. Combining these skills with the experiences I gained from my time before IMR at Scripps Institution of Oceanography when I participated in annual CLIVAR (Climate and Ocean: Variability, Predictability and Change) and GO-SHIP (Global Ocean Ship-Based Hydrographic Investigations Program) research cruises in countries all over the world from Japan to Chile to Australia, I hope to contribute to the multi-cultural scientific environment that is the EAF-Nansen Programme by helping our partners take advantage and learn from the resources and knowledge that are available from our joint cooperation.