Five Year Request for East Coast Winch Pool Facility (CY22-26) Year 1

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A request is made by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to fund the operation of the East Coast Winch Pool for an additional five years. The investment in overboarding equipment is an expensive undertaking due to the high cost of purchase, maintenance and shipping of these systems. In an effort to not only ensure that these systems are available to researchers for their work but to also ensure that that they are properly maintained and available to the entire science community with expert support, NSF created the East Coast Winch Pool. This “pool” was created to offer scientists a convenient single point of contact for all of their overboarding equipment needs as well as the expertise to provide them with creative engineering solutions for their unique requirements while at the same time reducing cost by pooling equipment for use by the scientific community.Broader ImpactsThe principal impact of the present proposal is under Merit Review Criterion 2 of the Proposal Guidelines (NSF 19-602). It provides infrastructure support for scientists to use the vessel and its shared-use instrumentation in support of their NSF-funded oceanographic research projects (which individually undergo separate review by the relevant research program of NSF). The acquisition, maintenance and operation of shared-use instrumentation allows NSF-funded researchers from any US university or lab access to working, calibrated instruments for their research, reducing the cost of that research, and expanding the base of potential researchers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.