Greetings!

Speaking of funding, I’m also pleased to report that GCOOS submitted its five-year proposal to the IOOS program office just before the end of the year. We look forward to continuing to support our local data providers and also expanding to new partners providing critical ocean data for sound decision making. The proposal and the local data providers are heavily based on our Strategic Plan.

Dr. Barbara Kirkpatrick

Executive Director

The Southeast Region of the National Marine Fisheries Service is seeking a new regional administrator to replace the retiring Dr. Roy Crabtree, who has led the office since 2003.

Autonomous sailing vessel Vela is on patrol searching the waters of Lake Okeechobee in Florida for harmful algal blooms as part of HALO. The “Harmful Algal Bloom Assessment of Lake Okeechobee” project is led by Dr. Jordan Beckler of Florida Atlantic University with GCOOS developing a web-based platform for visualizing bloom extent, intensities and the results of environmental characterization and modeling.

The HALO site is currently tracking an autonomous surface vehicle, Vela, launched by Navocean. Vela is the first autonomous sail-driven surface vehicle to be used for inland algae monitoring. It’s currently collecting air temperature, chlorophyll, CDOM, O2, Phycocyanin and turbidity data.

The $2.2 million grant for the project comes from the state of Florida following recommendations by its Blue-Green Algae Task Force.

A red tide bloom in Southwest Florida is being met with a larger volunteer network of people armed with HABscopes to monitor it.

HABscope is the low-cost, portable microscope that GCOOS outfitted with a special adaptor and iPod used to take video of water samples. The videos of the water samples are sent to the cloud where automated software is used to “read” them and determine whether Karenia brevis cells — the alga that causes red tides in the Gulf — are present and at what concentrations. This information is combined with wind and other data to develop the Red Tide Respiratory Forecast, which is activated during red tides and tells beachgoers the level of respiratory risk at each individual beach.

The Forecast was developed by NOAA in partnership with GCOOS and other local and state partners. NASA provided the initial funding.

Since the current bloom began in December 2020, the Red Tide Respiratory Forecast has expanded to cover beaches throughout the extent of the bloom, ranging from Boca Grande Pass to Cape Romano south of Marco Island. Volunteers are also available north through Pinellas County, should the bloom expand or move north.

This expanded coverage is made possible in part thanks to more than 35 dedicated contributors to the HABscope team, including local, state, and non-profit organizations along with individual volunteers and businesses.

“The Red Tide Respiratory Forecast truly is a team effort,” said Grant Craig, who coordinates the Red Tide Respiratory Forecast Volunteer team for GCOOS. “This team makes it possible for us to provide reports from dozens of beaches, getting us closer to our goal of ‘every beach every day.’”

GCOOS is working with NOAA and other partners to further expand the forecast to northern Florida and to Texas thanks to grants from IOOS and the MERHAB program.

The Gulf Research Program will host an upcoming Emerging ScienTalks: Webinar “Understanding Impacts of Neighborhood Flooding: A Case of the Pensacola Bay” from 1-2 p.m. ET on Jan. 21.

This monthly webinar series is designed to initiate conversations around societal and environmental problems in the Gulf while advancing scientific understanding. Early-Career Research Fellow, Dr. Kwame Owusu-Daaku from the University of West Florida investigates the urbanization of watersheds and neighborhood flooding. Participants will have the opportunity to look at current flood trends and projected future sea-level rise for the Pensacola Bay watershed. The webinar is designed for educators, parents and students.

The Gulf Shellfish Institute is sponsoring a virtual workshop on “The Science of Clam Restoration in Florida.”

The workshop will summarize the latest information on the ecological services provided by marine clams (e.g., Mercenaria spp.) and the quantification of those services. It will also identify where additional research is needed to maximize restoration benefits.

GCOOS’s Gulf of Mexico Coastal Acidification Network (GCAN) is on the Institute’s Shellfish Restoration Committee and helped to organize the event.

The U.S. National Committee for the Ocean Decade has announced the upcoming Ocean Decade U.S. Launch Meeting.

The 2-day virtual event will feature the first round of submissions of Ocean-Shots, concepts that aspire to create transformational change toward Decade Challenges. The program will include an Early Career Professionals Meet & Greet, Ocean-Shot ePoster Hall, and an Ocean Decade U.S. Nexus Exhibit Hall.

The first deadline is drawing near for the next competition in the Powering the Blue Economy™: Ocean Observing Prize designed to revolutionize our ability to collect the data needed to understand, map, and monitor the ocean.

Did you know that NOAA has been dedicated to mapping oceans, coasts and shorelines in the Gulf of Mexico for more than 200 years?

To make the charts and maps, NOAA developed new techniques and adapted many others from work across the world, says Tim Osborn, Central Gulf Coast Regional Navigation Manager, Office of Coast Survey, National Ocean Service. “It was shortly after the completion of the Lewis and Clark Expedition — the 'Corps of Discovery' — that President Thomas Jefferson chartered, in 1807, a Survey of the Coast. That work continues to this day.”

Historical maps and imagery are archived and available online on a site hosted by the Office of the Coast Survey.

The HSRP is a federal advisory committee that provides NOAA with independent advice on improving the quality, efficiency, and usefulness of NOAA's navigation-related products, data, and services, including nautical charts.

Nominations for the panel are now open and due no later than April 16 for four-year terms beginning in January 2022.

Did you know that the new Paddle the Gulf website highlights activities that can bring out your inner citizen scientist even as you enjoy the Gulf of Mexico and its coastal rivers and streams? Citizen science is a way for everyone to help scientists collect information and answer real world questions.

The site has resources that can help you track marine debris, microplastics and even invasive species.

The Embrace the Gulf campaign undertaken throughout 2020 by the Gulf of Mexico Alliance will continue in 2021 with ways you can take action. Throughout 2020, the campaign included a “message-a-day” about the Gulf sponsored by Clean Gulf Associates, which focused on the value, sustainability and productivity of the Gulf and attracted 24,000 social media fans, 50 proclamations from the five Gulf states and regional governments.

Florida SeaGrant has released a five-page fact sheet that estimates the potential economic impacts associated with a successfully restored oyster reef in Apalachicola Bay, basing estimates on different hypothetical oyster harvest goals.

The oyster industry in the bay has faced dramatic declines that have threatened the industry and prompted the Secretary of Commerce to declare a fishery disaster in 2013.

The Gulf of Mexico Alliance Water Resources Team is expanding its project to understand the economic impacts on water quality. The team’s earlier project looked at the economic impacts of toxic algae blooms in Florida and is now addressing harmful algal blooms (HABs) in the Mississippi Sound.

3-4: Ocean Decade U.S. Launch Meeting Virtual

15 - 17: Oceanology International Americas, San Diego

14: The Gulf of Mexico Conference 2021 Virtual TBD

25-27: 2nd International Operational Satellite Oceanography Symposium, Darmstadt, Germany

Dr. Barbara Kirkpatrick, Executive Director • Bill Lingsch, U.S. Glider User Group Coordinator • Dr. Chris Simoniello, Outreach & Education Coordinator • Dr. Kerri Whilden, Oceanographer • Felimon Gayanilo, Systems Architect, Co-Data Manager • Dr. Shinichi Kobara, Assistant Research Scientist, Product Developer •  Bob Currier, Research Specialist, Product Developer, Co-Data Manager • Marion Stoessel, Senior Research Associate • Jennifer Vreeland-Dawson, Research Associate • Grant Craig, Program Coordinator • Stephanie Watson, CETACEAN Coordinator • Nadine Slimak, Public Relations & Content Marketing, Vetted Communications, LLC • Dr. Chuan-Yuan Hsu, Post Doctoral Research Associate • Robbie Iles, Graduate Research Assistant • Laura Caldwell, Program Assistant

info@gcoos.org • 979.847.8879

In Memoriam: Matt Howard, 1952-2018