SEA STAR – Education through Ocean Exploration
At the start of this year, Ventures Beyond LLC launched the world’s first commercial education and training initiative for Citizen Scientist Aquanauts, SEA STAR. SEA STAR is short for Sea Exploration and Aquanautics Simulations, Training, and Analogy research.
The program’s eclectic curriculum integrates marine science, citizen science, and diving science to provide an original “learning through exploration”. This novel program aims to enable and inspire the upcoming generation of ocean and environmental stewards with the knowledge and skills they need to thrive.
Citizen Scientist participants will partake in an array of exciting activities. Most notably, they will experience first-hand a 24-hour undersea habitat experience. Asides from that, participants will be taught about physiology and diving physics, as well as opportunities in oceanography and marine sciences at Citizen Science.
Moreover, participants will engage in multiple hands-on underwater activities like utilizing dive tools to conduct a safe cleanup of coral reefs, as well as performing fish identification. The participants will experience what it’s like to work in microgravity as they engage in these seafloor excursions from their underwater habitat.
The SEA STAR’s Citizen Scientist program is a hybrid education model that combines multiple instructional delivery methods, online learning, and hands-on instruction. After participants have completed all facets of the program, they receive SEA STAR program’s certificate of completion. Moreover, they will receive 3 specialty diving credentials from the Professional Association of Diving Instructions (PADI); including PADI Aquanaut, PADI Underwater Maintenance, and PADI InnerSpace Diver.
The inaugural Citizen Scientist Aquanaut course ran from March 28 to 29, 2020, and was quickly followed by the second from May 30 to 31, 2020. Each course restricted to 6 people that were selected on a first-come basis. Venture Beyond LLC is dedicated to the furtherance of human exploration of Earth and Space through multidisciplinary and innovative educational programs.
If you are interested in the Citizen Scientist Aquanaut Program or any other of their programs, you can visit their website at https://sites.google.com/view/venturesbeyondllc/home for more information.
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