I work at Woods Hole Oceanographic Research - I started there two years ago. I run a lab that refurbishes the electronics that collects data from the sensors. Technology wise we are fairly slow to adopt new things, and making changes to the infrastructure can take a few years. It is incredibly interesting and fun! There is both a mix of real time issues that pop up that need nasa style engineering to fix (i.e. logging on remotely to a buoy and adding a script to control the power module as a clock that triggers the main loop in the microcontroller interrupt broke) and plenty of mysteries to solve (why did the mooring in the Irminger Sea disappear?)

The program I work for is OOI, where the goal is to have long term consistent readings of the ocean. We are funded by the NSF and deploy and recover over 20 moorings with sensors on the surface, along the riser column and at the anchor.

Before this job I made video games.. this is far more gratifying. I am redesigning and upgrading the electronics in the buoys one section at a time and already there has been a large improvement in uptime. Oceanography is a fairly new science and there are a lot of opportunities to make collecting and analyzing data easier and more accessible.

I bike to work along the ocean for 7 miles, take a small boat for 25 minutes, then another 3 miles along the ocean.

We always need engineers.. https://careers.whoi.edu/

My best advice to live with a lighter footprint? try to be more vegan, take the bus, bike more, vote.