Thanks to an opportunity provided by our program administrators at the NOAA Office of Coast Survey, eleven (!!) students and three staff from COMIT and the USF College of Marine Science will sail aboard the NOAA ship Nancy Foster this summer.

Over the next two months, our team members will have the chance to learn about and observe professional hydrographic surveys throughout the Blake Plateau.

Keep up with the cruise happenings and read in detail about our student's experiences with our summer blog series starting this Thursday, June 15.

New posts will be added each Tuesday and Thursday through July 20th on the news section of COMIT's website.

The lineup of students (turned bloggers!) headed out on the Nancy Foster this summer.

We've been hard at work over the last few months spinning up program infrastructure to support some exciting projects in the latter half of the year. 

The retrofit of the Center’s first uncrewed surface vessel, TREVOR (Test Robotics Environment Vehicle for Ocean Research), has continued to progress since the vehicle’s relaunch last quarter. Recent upgrades include new, modular hulls that will allow TREVOR to deploy in 12-ft or 16-ft configurations for improved stability, speed, and sensor payload capacity. The TREVOR engineering team designed a mounting system for the new hulls and has been experimenting with 3D-printed prototype propellers to further improve vehicle performance and reliability. 

COMIT Intern, Jaden Crute, with TREVOR's new mounting system that she, Kris Krasnosky, and Chad Lembke designed.

The Center has also been working hard to improve our data visualization capabilities. Our goal is to have a large room for these activities to use for remote operations with telepresence-enabled ships and uncrewed systems, display and exploration of integrated oceanographic data sets, and engaging with visitors. Outreach continues to be a focus for COMIT and this space could provide a great opportunity for local and virtual classroom fieldtrips. We have also been working with the Florida Institute of Oceanography on this effort as the data viz suite will benefit its new shoreside programming alongside the R/V Western Flyer, their newly acquired "floating classroom."

We recently completed the build-out of a dedicated visualization and parallel processing computer that will be used to develop and test emerging applications of cutting-edge (but still consumer grade) hardware. This new asset was specifically designed for tasks that benefit from the capabilities of modern graphics processing units (GPUs), such as machine learning, virtual reality, photogrammetry, and 3D rendering. 

The guts of our new computer with oodles of horsepower.

Last - but certainly not least - we are excited to announce that COMIT's director, Dr. Steve Murawski, was recently awarded the research grant “Surveillance of Pollution from Emerging Chemical Threats in Tampa Bay” from NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science. The project scope includes quarterly sampling of fish, water, and sediment throughout Tampa Bay which requires quick and easy access to the region. To accommodate this work, funds were included in the award to build a shallow water vessel. Plans are already being drafted to maximize its research impact and the new vessel is expected by late 2024. The boat, which will be about 28’ in length, has potential to be leveraged on a variety of COMIT activities. Some of the new kit includes a multibeam system as well as a laser scanner, LiDAR, push corer, and water sampler.

Student Spotlight

Snippets

PhD candidate, Alex Ilich, has a new publication out in Transactions in GIS on digital terrain models (DTMs) which also includes open-source software for use in R.

Co-PI, Dr. Tim Dixon, continues to build his geodesy program with a new NSF grant! He was recently funded to work on better understanding the conditions for tsunami generation after significant earthquakes. By deploying new, cost-effective, state-of-the-art geodesy equipment in subduction zones, Tim and his team hope to better predict tsunami risks. The project, titled "Collaborative Research: Improved Understanding of Subduction Zone Tsunami Genesis Using Sea Floor Geodesy Offshore Central America," is a collaboration with partners at University of California - San Diego, University of Houston, and University of New Mexico. 

Dr. Robert H. Weisberg, a former COMIT Co-PI prior to retirement, was elected to the Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine of Florida (ASEMFL) "for pioneering work advancing understanding of tropical and ocean current phenomena, contributing to mitigation of hurricanes and harmful algal blooms." Congrats Dr. Weisberg!

Our podcast has been making the rounds. Part one of our series was picked up by Here and Now (wbur) and carried by 477 NPR stations across 44 US States, DC, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands in February and May of this year. The Living on Earth episode which featured the second part of our series was carried by 221 NPR stations across 45 US states in March.

Meetings and Presentations

Our Director and lead PI, Steve Murawski, was invited to give a talk at the spring meeting of the National Academies Committee on Solid Earth Geophysics (COSEG), on May 11 in Washington DC. The talk, titled “Bathymetric Mapping in the Coastal Zone: Approaches, Opportunities and Application to Real World Problems," was part the Bathymetry and Topography at the Land-Ocean Interface session. Other talks at this meeting included satellite-based mapping, remote sensing of the coastal environment and several presentations on applications of mapping data for disaster events including coastal inundation of built infrastructure. A video recording of the event has been made available here.

The Florida Coastal Mapping Program (FCMaP) is holding a webinar called Prioritization 2Deep on Tuesday, June 20th from 1-2pm to garner stakeholder feedback. They'll be focusing on the 20-200m depth zones with the results to be discussed at the mid-year forum (Sept 14, 2023, virtual) and published for public use on FCMaP webpage and hub. Register here.

Our team members have all been busy! Below is a list of additional presentations and meetings from the last quarter:

March

Marine Pollution Forum, Barrier Island Parks Society (BIPS) and Coastal & Heartland National Estuary Partnership (CHNEP), 3/23/2023 (Invited speaker, Robert H. Weisberg) 

April

2023 Florida Floodplain Managers Association (FFMA) Annual Meeting, Miami, FL, 4/12/2023 (Co-presenter, Yonggang Liu) 

The MTS Florida TechSurge Meeting, Fort Pierce, FL, 4/13/2023 (Talk, Jay Law & Samantha D’Angelo) 

May

University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) Global Marine Science Summit, Wilmington, NC, 5/19/2023 (Invited speaker, Yonggang Liu) 

June

COMIT Co-PI Dr. Cheryl Hapke was invited to give a presentation at the Florida chapter's meeting on June 8th for the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (FL-ASPRS). Her talk was titled "The Florida Coastal Mapping Program (FCMaP) - Updates and Accomplishments.

Dr. Hapke is also slated to give an invited presentation at the Gulf of Mexico Alliance All-Hands meeting on June 29 in Austen, TX. Her talk is titled, "Using FCMaP as a Model for a Gulfwide Coastal Mapping Program."