Photo of research being done on Red Tide from the R/V Walton Smith. Photo Credit: NOAA AOML.

New Cruise Studies Red Tide Impacts in South Florida

AOML recently led a multi-agency (NOAA/AOML, NOAA/SEFSC, State of Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute, Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, NOAA/NESDIS, University of South Florida, MOTE Marine Laboratory and Aquarium, and University of Miami) research cruise to study the effects of Southwest Florida’s ongoing red tide. To address such a complex problem as red tide, the cruise brought together a diverse team of experts consisting of commercial fishermen, oceanographers, systems ecologist, phytoplankton ecologist, and fish population biologist. This cruise allowed researchers to take a holistic approach to characterize the extent of the red tide and its impacts. The goal of the cruise was to understand why these blooms happen to better inform effective future response measures and hopefully improve Florida’s resilience to these coastal events. 

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Beach at Sunrise

BEACHES Study Promotes Health & Safety for Beachgoers

Few accessible places represent Earth’s natural beauty quite like our beaches, but looks can be deceiving if there is a bacterial outbreak or contamination from offshore activities. Not being able to see these contaminants puts families at risk of exposure if they aren’t properly warned. The BEACHES project (Beach Exposure And Child Health Study), a collaboration between the University of Miami’s College of Engineering and the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies and AOML, along with the Universities of Arkansas and Texas, aims to pair child behavioral science with microbiology to address exposure risk of beachgoers.

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Study area with shaded colors representing the ocean depths in meters from the ETOPO1 dataset. The thin black line denotes the eastern portion of the SAMBA mooring line; the black crosses and red squares represent the tall mooring and CPIES positions, respectively. The annually averaged sea-surface temperature values for 2015 from the ODYSSEA dataset are plotted with colored contours.

Study published on the mesoscale dynamics in the eastern South Atlantic Ocean

In a recent article published in the journal “Ocean Science”, Marion Kersale (CIMAS, PhOD) collaborated with scientists from South Africa and France to explore the buoyancy and velocity changes due to eddies, dipoles, and current filaments in the Cape Basin using two observational systems that are part of the South Atlantic Meridional overturning circulation Basin-wide Array (SAMBA) at 34.5°S.

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eAUV post-deployment. Photo Credit: NOAA.

NOAA Collaborates with Partners to Test Unmanned Underwater Vehicles which Record Harmful Algal Blooms in Lake Erie

In a collaborative effort between NOAA, the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, research merging robotics with biochemistry will give us a detailed, three-dimensional picture of harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie in near real-time and take water samples for genomic analysis. The end goal is a Harmful Algal Bloom forecast to help managers make decisions about environmental health and public safety pertaining to the lake. AOML’s own Dr. Kelly Goodwin is participating in the project to help with instrument and sample recovery.

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Sunset image from the Walton Smith in Miami, Florida. Photo Credit: NOAA.

Cruising for Conservation: Restoring Florida’s Water Quality

 In August 2018, a team of biological oceanographers and ecologists set sail on the R/V Walton Smith to sample the waters of Biscayne Bay & Florida Bay. AOML has conducted regular interdisciplinary observations of south Florida coastal waters since the early 1990’s. We spoke with Chris Keble, the lead scientist for AOML’s South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Research project, to learn more.

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Ubaldo Lopez of the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez prepares to launch NOAA ocean gliders in the summer of 2017 off Puerto Rico.

Unmanned Ocean Gliders Help Improve Hurricane Forecasts

NOAA will soon launch a fleet of 15 unmanned gliders in the Caribbean Sea and tropical Atlantic Ocean this hurricane season to collect important oceanic data that could prove useful to forecasters. “If you want to improve prediction of how hurricanes gain strength or weaken as they travel over the ocean, it’s critical to take the ocean’s temperature and measure how salty it is,” said Gustavo Goni, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory who is helping lead the glider research. “Not just at the surface, which we measure with satellites, but down into deeper layers of ocean waters.”

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Alyssa and Austin at Sunset. Photo Credit Kelly Montero, NOAA.

AOML Researchers Participate in South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Cruise

AOML researchers recently participated in the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Research Cruise, a survey of south Florida’s coastal waters on June 22-26 aboard the R/V Savannah. These cruises have investigated coastal water quality in south Florida since the late 1990s. The science crew collected samples to measure nutrients, plankton, productivity, chlorophyll a, and dissolved inorganic carbon. They also recorded salinity and temperature to help monitor ecosystem restoration efforts in south Florida. These cruises have an additional focus on lower trophic level dynamics downstream from the Shark River on the southwest Florida shelf.

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Florida Coral Disease April 2018

Coral Reefs will be Unable to Keep Pace with Sea-Level Rise

NOAA contributed to a study published today in the journal Nature that compares the upward growth rates of coral reefs with predicted rates of sea-level rise and found many reefs would be submerged in water so deep it will hamper their growth and survival. The study was done by an international team of scientists led by the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. 

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