Students from SOEST’s Department of Ocean and Resources Engineering and UHM Engineering took the top prize in the Department of Energy’s 2020 Marine Energy Collegiate Competition. Team lead Nicholas Ulm, business plan lead Stefan Mrozewksi, Jonathan Wallen, and Maddyson Jeske also took home the Best Pitch award. The challenge: develop unique solutions to advance the marine energy industry by providing power to offshore applications relevant to the blue economy. Their winning device, Hālona, is a mobile wave-powered autonomous underwater vehicle docking station designed to collect high resolution oceanographic data.
|
|
|
UH researchers, including several from Hawaiʻi Sea Grant’s Center for Smart Building and Community Design, studied centrally air-conditioned homes in Kapolei to monitor energy consumption. They created a computer simulation of one house and tested many options to improve energy performance. The most efficient model reduced annual energy consumption by over 47 percent. This study can help Hawaiʻi residents and developers identify energy saving strategies, cut energy bills, achieve Hawaiʻi’s 100 percent clean energy goal by 2045, and mitigate climate change.
For more Hawaiʻi Sea Grant news, read the latest issue of the Ka Pili Kai magazine.
|
|
|
Researchers at the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology discovered that the Hawaiian tiger cowrie (Leho-kiko) is a voracious predator of alien sponges such as the Orange Keyhole sponge, which can overgrow native corals and is a concern as it spreads across reefs within Kāneʻohe Bay. In the study, they found that each cowrie eats more than half their body weight in sponges each week. Prevention, early detection, and rapid removal are the best tools to prevent impacts from alien species. And for that, preservation of the endemic Hawaiian tiger cowrie is the best home-grown solution--instead of over-harvesting them for ornaments.
|
|
|
Matthew Widlansky, associate director of the UH Sea Level Center, led a study that identified a global tendency for future sea levels to become more variable as oceans warm due to greenhouse gas emissions. Sea level variability alters tidal cycles and enhances the risks of coastal flooding and erosion beyond changes associated with sea level rise. It was previously unknown whether the rate of thermal expansion, which accelerates with warming, will affect the variability of sea level. The new findings further emphasize the importance of sea level monitoring and forecasting, as sea levels are likely to cause tides to be more extreme than usual.
|
|
|
Earth Sciences professor Eric Gaidos leads a new project on the Las Cumbres Observatory global telescope network to catch mysterious fading stars. Using thousands of hours of observing time, they will investigate the neighborhoods of young stars where planets are thought to be forming. They will monitor stars that dim in a dramatic and usually unpredictable manner due to dust in clouds and disks around those stars. This dust occasionally transits the star, blocking some of its light. The goal of the project is to better understand how disks of dust and small bodies called “planetesimals” around newborn stars eventually coalesce into planets.
|
|
|
Jacob Johansen, assistant research professor at the Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology, co-authored a study that found small, bottom-dwelling reef fishes on the world’s hottest coral reefs in the southern Arabian Gulf are much less diverse and abundant than on nearby reefs with less extreme temperatures. The study, published in Nature Communications, examined ‘cryptobenthic’ fishes, small fish at the base of coral reef food webs, in the Arabian Gulf and the Sea of Oman, and linked the reduced diversity and productivity of communities in the Arabian Gulf to energetic deficits that preclude the existence of many species.
|
|
|
Places with lots of nooks and crannies contain lots of living things—that old brick-pile in the backyard has far more critters than the concrete driveway. This general rule is the same in natural habitats, from the tops of mountains to coral reefs. These habitats range from relatively simple, flat surfaces to highly complex three-dimensional structures. Damaris Torres-Pulliza, a doctoral candidate in the Joshua Madin Lab at the Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology and a team of ecologists and engineers developed a relatively simple way to standardize how habitat complexity is measured. This new approach allows for insights into how structural changes to land and seascapes alter ecosystems.
|
|
|
To improve the water quality in He‘eia Fishpond and surrounding coastal areas, Hawai‘i Sea Grant is leading a two-year project in partnership with Paepae o Heʻeia, Hui Kū Maoli Ola, and Nā Kilo Honua o Heʻeia to remove invasive mangrove and hau and install bioretention basins. The project, funded by the Hawaiʻi Department of Health Clean Water Branch, builds on a previous successful project that resulted in considerable improvements to the ecosystem and water quality within the fishpond with the removal of invasive red mangroves.
For more Hawaiʻi Sea Grant news, read the latest issue of the Ka Pili Kai magazine.
|
|
|
To show your support for SOEST, consider donating to the SOEST Enrichment Fund. Your contribution helps maintain and improve the quality of the educational and research capabilities at SOEST so as to serve better all the constituent communities of SOEST. |
|
Know others interested in news from SOEST?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
