We've talked before about the gentle rivalry between space and ocean science and as someone who spent a good part of this month with kid brothers who alternated between running to opposite sides of the playground and sitting on each other, our moon/sea sibling rivalry tracks. But no matter how salty your blood, how could you not be moved by the Artemis II moon mission and its safe return to the Pacific Ocean? There was moon joy and mesmerizing photos and reflections on the overview effect, when you encounter something so complex it shifts your understanding of the world and your place in it.¹

It's appropriate that the Artemis II landing falls in National Poetry Month, a time for words about complex ideas and big emotions. Love’s Philosophy, a Shelley classic, touches on that interdependence between the moon and the tides; how the ocean and space are inseparable even as they travel away from each other. Now try Katie Willingham’s Staying Power for a trip through the scientific method and the challenge of reproducibility. There are more than a thousand poems mentioning data at the Poetry Foundation.

If you’re trying to communicate your why of data stewardship, why you do the work you do, maybe consider a form besides a journal paper. And if a poem feels too ambitious², there’s always the newsletter blog post, where I hope to someday be as eloquent as Lisa Graumlich is here on ‘unselfish collaboration in research.‘

What else has caught our attention this month:

• Another thing the ocean has in common with space: rocks. You can share the data you collected about benthic sediments or asteroid minerals, but what do you do with the actual physical sample? SESAR can help. It’s an open data registry for physical samples from both ocean and space. 

• The recommendations in this new report on California water data from the California Water Data Consortium are relevant for almost any environmental or public data project, watery or not. Data governance and people are essential to success, collaborate to scale from local to regional impact, and fund infrastructure (including people) for the long term, if you want to stay nimble and adapt.

• Hot off the presses is a new piece by Steve Diggs & Mark Parsons on data preservation as wildfire prevention and management. As they say — “stay ready so you don't have to get ready” — when it may be too late.

• Move over marine carbon dioxide removal. Let’s turn CO2 into butter and bonbons.

That’s our April update. Next month Intertidal Agency will wrap up our inaugural ocean data stewardship training cohort and we’ll start planning for the next one. Want to grow the data stewardship capacity of your team? Drop us a line, and let’s create a program that works for you.

-Kate