Jan 18, 2025by: Larry Dorminy No Comments

Brownbag February 11th- Collecting Acoustic Data in the Coastal Ocean: New Insights from Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, Brunswick, GA

Brownbag Presentation

February 11th, 2025

Brownbag 12:00PM-1:00PM

Science After Party 1:00PM-2:30PM

Brownbag will be held at the Susan Shipman Environmental Learning Center @ GADNR Coastal Regional Headquarters

One Conservation Way, Brunswick, GA 31520

Please join the GA Coastal Management Program for a Brownbag Presentation on Collecting Acoustic Data in the Coastal Ocean: New Insights from Autonomous Underwater Vehicles by Dr. Catherine Edwards and Frank McQuarrie with the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography.

Gliders are autonomous underwater vehicles, or ocean robots, that fly by changing their buoyancy and center of gravity, which makes them a relatively quiet platform for collecting acoustic data in the coastal ocean. Catherine Edwards will give an overview of her recent work in coastal Georgia using gliders for acoustic telemetry and real-time monitoring of right whales using passive acoustics, give some examples of how understanding environmental conditions can help inform interpretation of the acoustic data, and consider how to leverage these data streams to design smart systems for fisheries science and management.

Science After Party: In the science after-party, Frank McQuarrie will dig into the data from recent acoustic telemetry work at Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary in more detail, and consider what processes control the effectiveness of telemetry on tidal, daily, weather, and seasonal time scales, showing data from Gray’s Reef as evidence. The second half of the after party will be a group discussion to consider the practical implications for interpretation of the data for management purposes.

Speaker Bios:

Dr. Catherine Edwards is a physical oceanographer and Associate Professor at the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography and in the Department of Marine Sciences at University of Georgia. Edwards’s research focuses on answering fundamental questions in coastal oceanography and fisheries sciences with autonomous underwater vehicles, developing novel ways to optimize their use with engineering principles and real-time data streams from models and observations. Her work has been featured in local, regional, and national press, including NPR’s All Things Considered, Science Magazine, WIRED, Forbes, and The Weather Channel.

Frank McQuarrie is a PhD candidate in the Edwards Lab at the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography focusing on acoustic telemetry efficiency. He first saw a glider at Rutgers in 2011 and they have fascinated him since, he loves deploying/piloting/retrieving them as acoustic receiver platforms around the South Atlantic Bight.