OceansWide History
 On
behalf of OceansWide, welcome to our Website! I'm Campbell
Scott "Buzz." I'm the founder of OceansWide and
I'd like to share the story of why I began this unique organization.
I began my adventure as a young fisherman on Matinicus Island,
Maine. My love for the ocean grew greater with time and
I thank my parents for providing me with my first boat at
the age of 12. It was a small double ended boat called a peapod
and it came with 25 wooden traps.
For years I rowed that peapod around Matinicus, exploring its coves, beaches and
ledges, fishing for lobsters, cod,
mackerel and flounder and anything else that might swim,
wiggle or crawl.
It all started for me as I rowed around
the shallow water. I constantly found myself looking over
the side of that little boat. I was claiming that I was trying to find
the best spot to set my traps, but in reality I was looking down
into the water as far as I could see. As I grew older and
began seining for herring, setting long lines for halibut and dragging
for scallops there was one thing that never changed.
I always found myself looking over the side, watching
and waiting yet again to see what would come up from below and
the ocean never ceased to amaze me.
 I saw halibut the size
of barn doors, weighing three and four hundred pounds being
pulled from the water just offshore
from my house and I remember fishing on scallop boats
that would have to stop fishing because their decks
were so full that if they caught another scallop they would
have to leave the drags hanging in the air until we made room for
them on deck. One of my favorite memories as a kid
is that of fishing with hand lines and catching large ground
fish so plentiful that our hooks would never make it to
bottom before being hit. In fact, the fish were so big that people
today wouldn't believe we'd caught them without photographic proof.
There were times when I watched humpback whales
feeding on giant schools of herring, and as far as the
eye could see in every direction, dolphin in the thousands speeding
through the waters off Matinicus Rock heading for
some secret destination.
Those days were amazing and made me feel that I could be happy staying on Matinicus,
fishing forever as many generations had done before. But, as we all know, fishing
didn't continue like that and by 1987 things had really
changed. The lobster catch had dropped off in such a way that it was
difficult to make a living as a fisherman. Cod,
halibut and other ground fish were disappearing and the industry
showed signs of worsening.
Just like many others on the coast of Maine,
I was forced to leave. I had spent seventeen wonderful
years in the Gulf of Maine and I would miss it. It was a difficult
decision to leave the island but I felt that
if I had to give up fishing perhaps the best thing for me to do would be
to study fishing and the fisheries industry. Perhaps
I could learn something that would enable me to help the industry stay
alive. Perhaps someday maybe I could even return
to work and live on the Gulf of Maine.
 After studying at the University
of Maine, I went to work for the US Antarctic Program in 1994. For four
years; I sailed on a research ice breaker ship, the
Nathanial B. Palmer.
My job onboard was helping visiting
scientists conduct their research as we sailed through the icy waters
surrounding Antarctica. Once again, I found
myself hypnotized by the ocean and wanting to know more and more
about what was down below the surface.
 From Antarctica I moved
north and joined the team at the Monterey Bay Aquarium
Research Institute in sunny California. Now I had an opportunity to see parts of
the Pacific Ocean and it was here that I finally had
a real opportunity to answer my life-long question, "What
is down there"?
I became a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) pilot. An ROV is
tethered, unmanned submersible.
ROVs give us the ability to look deep into the oceans. This helped
answer the question "what is down there?" in such great detail
- more than you could ever imagine!
I spent eight years "flying" this ROV
within the depths of the Pacific Ocean
and the canyons that lie beneath
it. Working with and learning from some
of the most educated and interesting people
I had ever met was truly inspiring.
Together we studied science, engineering
and history. Writers, film makers and educators
who wanted to tell and show the
world the secrets of our oceans joined
us. As I sat in the pilot's chair watching
and learning from them my imagination
again began to run wild and it wasn't long
before I was asking questions... again.
Why wasn't this around when I was a kid?
Wouldn't it have been an adventure? I could
have learned
so much more, so much sooner in my life.
And now that we have this technology, can't
we use it for education? How
could I help today's students experience
this first-hand? I knew if they could peek
into the depths of the oceans by
learning to fly an ROV. It would fire their
enthusiasm just as it has done for me as
an adult. If we could give them
this experience early in life, where might
they go from there? And how might they
help protect our fragile ocean planet
so that fish and whales and all manner
of marine life continue to thrive? These
questions were easy to answer.
 And so began
the process of designing and building the
OceansWide project. OceansWide:
Opportunity
for Creating
Environmental
Awareness NationS WIDE. Our mission is
to introduce students to marine science
through
technology
and to empower them
to learn, grow and thrive through experiential
education.
My life&'s focus is now
to use ROV's as educational
tools which will give students the unique
opportunity to study the Gulf of Maine
never before available. My intent
is that OceansWide will become a platform
for sustaining our oceans and fisheries
for generations.
I've started OceansWide
with the hope that maybe someday my descendants
might have
a peapod and
25 wooden traps
to go with it...
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