Gulf of Mexico
Aboard NOAA ships, research assistant professor Tom Weber and CCOM director Larry Mayer helped assess the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in July 2010. Using sonar tools, Weber looked for subsurface oil plumes near the spill, while Mayer helped find ways to track subsurface oil.
Gulf of Alaska
Jodi Pirtle, post-doc research associate, created accurate fishery habitat maps for NOAA biologists in Spring 2011 using seafloor mapping and "ground-truthing" video.
Northern Mariana Islands
The deepest part of the world's ocean, the 6.78-mile deep Mariana Trench, was measured in greater detail than ever before by a team led by research professor Jim Gardner in 2010. In 2011, at least four previously unknown "bridges," rising 8,000 feet above the seafloor, were discovered running across the trench off the eastern coast of the Philippines.
New Hampshire Coast
A specially adapted jet ski equipped with sophisticated sonar tools was used for seafloor mapping in shallow coastal areas in 2011 by research associate professor Tom Lippmann, using the Coastal Bathymetry Survey System.
South Pacific
Jim Gardner, Brian Calder, Brian O'Donnell and David Armstrong, aboard R/V Kilo Moana, conducted U.S. Law of the Sea seafloor mapping at the northern end of the Line Island chain.
