The National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) describes the integrated collaboration between the Southampton-based part of the Natural Environment Research Council’s National Oceanography Centre, and University of Southampton Ocean and Earth Science. The waterfront campus, on Southampton's Empress Dock, was opened in 1996 as the Southampton Oceanography Centre by Prince Philip (he also renamed it the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, in 2005), NOCS is located near the Ocean Village development in the dock area of Southampton. It is one of a group of centres specialising in marine science, earth science and marine technology, and provides a platform for interdisciplinary research (such as the Autosub Under Ice programme[1]) alongside a comprehensive teaching facility.
The NOCS comprises the University of Southampton’s Ocean and Earth Science academic unit which operates alongside five NERC research divisions and the NERC's National Marine Facilities Sea Systems . In addition to housing some 520 research scientists and staff, over 700 undergraduate and postgraduate students call the NOCS home.[2] The NOCS's on-site resources include the UK National Oceanographic Library, the nationally important Discovery Collections and the British Ocean Sediment Core Repository. The NOCS is also the base for the purpose-built research vessels RRS Discovery and RRS James Cook (and formerly RRS Charles Darwin).
Prior to 1 May 2005, NOCS was known as the Southampton Oceanography Centre (SOC). The name was changed to reflect the Centre's prominence in ocean and earth sciences within the UK.
On 1st February 2010 the merger of NOCS and the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, Liverpool was announced. The combined institute is known as the National Oceanography Centre. The new combined centre brings together a full range of deep ocean and coastal oceanographic expertise.
On the 25th March 2010 an expedition aboard the RRS James Cook set out to study the world's deepest volcanic rift.[3] On the 12th April it was reported the expedition had discovered the world's deepest undersea volcanic vents, known as 'black smokers', 5,000 metres (3.1 mi) down in the Cayman Trough in the Caribbean.[4][5][6]
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