Charles Anderson, marine geophysical software

As the NCEI fisheries acoustic data manager, Chuck Anderson is responsible for working with NOAA and other data providers to archive “fisheries acoustic data”—water-column sonar and passive acoustic— and associated metadata. Anderson demonstrated above-and-beyond initiative to adapt, enhance, and expand a software tool set (which he custom-built for just fisheries acoustic data) to support general marine geophysical data. The work greatly benefitted the broader scientific community within and beyond NOAA. Anderson’s “CruisePack” software is enabling critical marine geophysical data to be well documented and preserved for generations to come. The innovative approaches that Anderson has taken in the design and implementation of CruisePack addressed multiple challenges inherent to complex and variable datasets, a national and international community of non-experts in metadata, and a variety of research objectives.