Over the last several months, our crowdsourced bathymetry (CSB) pilot program, Crowd the Bay, spun up rapidly. The team participated in two International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) CSB working group meetings this year with the first in January (Boulder, CO) and the most recent in August (Stavanger, Norway).

Most recently, COMIT's CSB team held its first stakeholder engagement meeting on September 21st. This meeting's goal was to make initial contact with stakeholders as a CSB network in Tampa Bay (and eventually beyond) is being built. Attendees represented a range of organizations with interests and needs that could be addressed by more real-time seafloor depth data collection.

Over the next few months, the CSB team will digest the feedback garnered during the meeting to generate future plans and next steps. This information will be compiled into a report which is expected to be in a sharable state by early next year.

We are also planning a half day follow-up and expansion workshop at the Gulf of Mexico Conference (GOMCON) happening February 19-22, 2024 in Tampa, FL.

Special thanks to Chris Simoniello from the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System (GCOOS) and Kristin Erickson from the Florida Coastal Mapping Program (FCMaP) for helping the COMIT team organize and facilitate the meeting.

We also want to extend tremendous gratitude to our attendees who took full days out of their schedules (and more for those that had to travel!) to talk CSB.

In related news, project lead, Sarah Grasty, has also been invited as a panelist during a CSB session at the upcoming Map the Gaps symposium in Monaco, November 7-8, 2023. Registration is free and there is a virtual option to attend.

COMIT's CSB Stakeholder Meeting welcomed attendees from the US Coast Guard, Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, Freedom Boat Club, USGS, NOAA, International Sea Keepers, US Army Corps of Engineers, Tampa Bay Ports, UNH's Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping, and the Tampa Bay Harbor Pilots.

Earlier this month (laboring through Labor Day weekend), our glider and multibeam staff and students boarded the Florida Institute of Oceanography's R/V WT Hogarth to collect data in support of a potpourri of objectives. 

Read about how their cruise went thanks to the dynamic glider duo - Stella and Sam.

Oceanic glider, Stella, sits in her pontoon during a calibration for the onboard EK Mini water column echosounder during COMIT's recent cruise.

Co-PI, Alastair Graham, made the move back home to the United Kingdom late this summer. He took a position at Cardiff University and also welcomed two new family members in early September. We want to thank Dr. Graham for his myriad of contributions to the program over the last several years and send him well wishes on his new career and family ventures. Dr. Graham will be greatly missed at COMIT and the College of Marine Science, but he will maintain involvement in select projects and on student committees. Cheers, Ali!

Dr. Graham (left) with students during their Geophysical Tools course cruise.

Student Spotlight

Snippets

Our director, Steve Murawski, is a person of many talents! In addition to heading successful mapping programs over the last several years, he's also an accomplished fisheries scientist. At this year's American Fisheries Society conference, his contributions to the field were recognized upon receiving the Society's Award of Excellence.

Students Rosemary Burkhalter-Castro, Steven Paul, and Margaret Hanley started internships at NOAA this quarter. They have been hired as part-time contractors at the Office of Coast Survey working with Miya Pavlock who leads the External Source Data (ESD) team. External data sources include any data not collected directly by NOAA (including entities such as ourselves! As well as the US Navy, USGS, survey companies, and other academic institutions). They will be helping the ESD team with any tasks which require extra support such as data licensing, ingestion of external data, workflow development, organizing repositories, and more.

Jay (back, left) with undergraduate students on a recent oceanographic sampling methods cruise which he planned and led.

Research associate, Jason (Jay) Law, was the recent recipient of an Outstanding Staff Award from the University of South Florida - and it is much deserved recognition. Aside from his "day job" maintaining and building buoys for the coastal modeling group, Jay also mentors several undergraduate interns and recently organized a field methods research expedition experience for students from St. Petersburg College. Congrats, Jay!

COMIT's Field Operations Manager, Matthew Hommeyer, was invited to serve on the International Scientific Committee in support of next year's Marine Geological and Biological Habitat Mapping (GeoHab) meeting in Arendal, Norway. He and committee will work to review submitted abstracts over the coming months and help direct the scientific content at the conference.

Professional development opportunity! QPS is hosting another training on Qinsy, Qimera, and Fledermaus with us next month. Sign-ups are requested by next week to lock-in the date, otherwise QPS will reschedule for another time.

Date: October 16-20, 2023

Place: USF College of Marine Science, St. Petersburg, FL

Cost: $1,750

Link: https://qps.nl/events/qinsy-qimera-fledermaus-training-29/

Meetings and Presentations

Senior Researcher, Stephan O'Brien, was accepted into the Marine Technology Society's EMERGE Program earlier this year. This opportunity provides Stephan with a myriad of activities and guided programming at this year's OCEANS conference in Biloxi, MS (September 25 - 29) aimed to support early-career ocean professionals.

The Florida Coastal Mapping Program (FCMaP) recently hosted a summit highlighting preliminary results from their deep water (20-200 meter) prioritization efforts. There were also talks recapping the status of Florida's nearshore mapping progress. You can watch a recording of the meeting here.