After we had discovered that we were going to be marine scientists on board a research vessel we had to design our boat. We looked on the website for our fictional company, NZ COSSA, and found a fact sheet for The Aumoana, our research vessel. We also looked at some photos and you tubes of other real research vessels including The Joides Resolution (an international research vessel) and the Tangaroa (the local research vessel of NIWA here in Wellington). This helped us imagine what our research vessel might look like. We learnt about different decks on a boat (including the bridge, tween, upper, trawling, and bottom decks), and different types of equipment such as winching equipment to lower scientific equipment into the water. We had to think about what the people on the boat would need to live on the boat for weeks at a time including cabins, cafeterias, medical rooms and lots more! We divided into groups to read the fact sheet for The Aumoana and then in these groups we chose an area of the boat to map. We all had a go at mapping using a birds eye view, which was a good challenge! Each group then shared back to everyone all the details they had added to our boat.
