Two Ocean Observing Teams Land Two Prestigious Awards
Noting the crucial role of global oceans to the health of our planet, the Global Ocean Ship-based Hydrographic Investigations Program (GO-SHIP) team and the Biological Global Ocean Ship-based Hydrographic Investigations Program (Bio-GO-SHIP) are the recipients of two prestigious awards.
GO-SHIP was selected from a competitive pool of nominations to receive the The Oceanography Society’s Ocean Observing Team Award. It was presented to the team at the 2026 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland.
The award recognizes the program’s 20-year legacy of "groundbreaking and sustained contributions to ocean observing that have transformed scientific understanding of the global ocean and delivered profound societal benefits.”
Left to Right: Alyse Larkin, CPAESS | NOAA program manager with NOAA’s Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing (GOMO) Program; Kathy Tedesco, CPAESS | NOAA program manager with NOAA’s Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing (GOMO) Program.
Credits: Alyse Larkin and Kathy Tedesco
“GO-SHIP has transformed ocean observing through innovations in design, interoperability, and data management, ensuring continuity and accuracy in the world’s most climate-relevant datasets,” wrote Kathy Tedesco and Alyse Larkin in their nomination letter. Both scientists are CPAESS | NOAA program managers with NOAA’s Global Ocean Monitoring and Observing (GOMO) Program that provides funding for GO-SHIP in partnership with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and have collaborated with the GO-SHIP team.
Characterized by international collaboration, GO-SHIP was built on earlier programs, establishing the first “interoperable global framework for repeat hydrography, integrating ships, sensors, calibration protocols, and open data systems into a unified observing strategy. These observations underpin many of the most consequential advances in modern ocean and climate science.”
Members of the Global Ocean Ship-based Hydrographic Investigations Program (GO-SHIP) team after having received The Oceanography Society’s Ocean Observing Team Award at the 2026 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland.
Credit: Jenny Ramarui
“GO-SHIP is ensuring that international climate assessments and policies rest on a shared, validated, and openly accessible foundation, advancing the frontiers of ocean and climate science, and fundamentally transforming how the global community measures and stewards the ocean,” said Tedesco.
Additionally, Tedesco and Larkin led the nomination for a second award, the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) Excellence in Partnering Award. The GOMO-funded project, “Piloting Biological Global Ocean Ship-based Hydrographic Investigations Program (Bio-GO-SHIP) on US Cruises,” was honored for the team’s work to understand the role of plankton in global biogeochemistry and quantify biodiversity across the ocean by adding biological measurements to the decadally-repeated observations collected by scientific colleagues at GO-SHIP.
Team members of the “Piloting Biological Global Ocean Ship-based Hydrographic Investigations Program (Bio-GO-SHIP) on US cruises” that was the 2024 recipient of the NOPP Excellence in Partnering Award.
From left to right: Jason Graff, Oregon State University; Harriet Alexander, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Steve Thur, Assistant Administrator, NOAA Research; Luke Thompson, Northern Gulf Institute; Adam Martiny, University of California Irvine; Sophie Clayton, (formerly) Old Dominion University, (currently) National Oceanography Centre, UK; and Nicole Poulton, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences.
Credit: Alicia Sorcic
The NOPP Excellence in Partnering Award is given annually to a NOPP project that best exemplifies the program’s objective of developing a successful network of partnerships to advance the ocean sciences. The 2024 award was presented to the team at the 2026 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Glasgow, Scotland.
“Together, these awards honor the entire GO-SHIP and Bio-GO-SHIP teams from scientists to students whose collective efforts embody the spirit of their respective awards in sustaining exceptional collaboration, scientific excellence, and coordination across institutions and nations,” said Larkin.
