MIT Sea Grant News + Updates | |
Advancing Technology for Aquaculture | MIT Sea Grant students apply machine learning to support local aquaculture hatchery | |
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Like land-based farming, shellfish aquaculture requires healthy seed production in order to maintain a sustainable industry. Aquaculture hatchery production of shellfish larvae — seed — requires close monitoring to assess and track health from the earliest stages of life.
With funding from J-WAFS, MIT Sea Grant is working with collaborators from the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northeastern University's Institute for Experiential Robotics, Aquaculture Research Corporation (A.R.C.), and Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance, to advance technology for the aquaculture industry.
Two MIT UROP students have joined the effort this semester, working with MIT Sea Grant Assistant Director, Advisory Services Robert Vincent. Undergraduates Unyime Usua and Santiago Borrego (pictured above) are using microscopy images of shellfish seed to train machine learning algorithms to help automate the identification and counting process.
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MIT Sea Grant students used images of
early-stage shellfish larva under a microscope to highlight healthy and unhealthy or nonliving seed. (Image: Unyime Usua and A.R.C.) |
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2024 Doherty Professor in Ocean Utilization | Welcoming MIT Assistant Professor Aristide Gumyusenge | |
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MIT Sea Grant welcomes MIT Assistant Professor Aristide Gumyusenge from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) as our 2024 Doherty Professor in Ocean Utilization.
Assistant Professor Gumyusenge was nominated for his research, Developing Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) for Detecting Perfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in Marine Environments.
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Pictured: MIT Sea Grant Director Michael Triantafyllou and Doherty Professor Aristide Gumyusenge. (Image: Jason Sparapani/DMSE) | |
Accepting Nominations through May 9th | Dean Horn Award for Undergraduate Study in Marine Research | |
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MIT Sea Grant is accepting student nominations for the Dean Horn Award for Undergraduate Study in Marine Research through May 9, 2024.
Nomination is by letter from the student’s faculty supervisor, accompanied by the student’s research report. Students are encouraged to ask their faculty supervisor for a nomination. MIT undergaduates from any department are eligible.
The awardee is selected for excellence in design and execution of their marine-related research project, and for clear communication of results. An award of $1000 and a certificate will be presented at the end of May.
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For questions and nominations, email
MIT Sea Grant Research Coordinator Mary Newton Lima: mnewlim@mit.edu | |
Artificial Reefs | Sustainable offshore structures engineered to reduce storm damage and provide habitats for marine life | |
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MIT Sea Grant, the Center for Bits and Atoms, and a team of MIT researchers are hoping to fortify coastlines with “architected” reefs — sustainable, offshore structures engineered to mimic the wave-buffering effects of natural reefs while also providing pockets for marine life to live.
The team’s reef design centers on a cylindrical structure surrounded by four rudder-like slats. The engineers found that when this structure stands up against a wave, it efficiently breaks the wave into turbulent jets that ultimately dissipate most of the wave’s total energy. The team has calculated that the new design could reduce as much wave energy as existing artificial reefs, using 10 times less material.
The researchers plan to fabricate each cylindrical structure from sustainable cement, which they would mold in a pattern of “voxels” that would provide pockets for fish and other marine life to settle in. The cylinders could be connected to form a long, semipermeable wall, which the engineers could erect along a coastline, about half a mile from shore.
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Based on the team’s initial experiments with lab-scale prototypes, the architected reef could reduce the energy of incoming waves by more than 95 percent. | This work was funded, in part, by Sea Grant and the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Details of the architected reef design were reported in a study published in the open-access journal PNAS Nexus. | |
Announcing New Core Funded Research | Six projects focus on aquaculture, fisheries, ocean acidification, and marine debris | |
Sea Grant's Impacts Ripple Across U.S. Communities | StoryMap features impacts from Sea Grant programs | |
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Explore this StoryMap featuring highlights from 34 Sea Grant programs, including autonomous surface vehicles designed to monitor ocean acidification, developed by a team of MIT Sea Grant-funded researchers.
Ocean waters all over the world have become more acidic over time largely due to increased absorption of carbon dioxide dissolved into the ocean from the atmosphere. Researchers continually collect data from various locations to monitor this issue.
A team of MIT Sea Grant-funded researchers, led by MIT Mechanical Engineering Professor Dick Yue, took a proactive step towards addressing ocean acidification concerns by designing and fabricating a fleet of innovative autonomous surface vehicles.
Each of these small, self-driving boats will become an integral component of the cutting-edge framework that will allow researchers to collect more data in less time.
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Autonomous sensing buoys ready for deployment to monitor ocean acidification. (Image: Duck Yue and Grgur Tokić) | |
New AUV Course | 2.S01: Introduction to Autonomous Underwater Vehicles | |
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Dr. Supun Randeni and Michael Sacarny from the MIT Sea Grant AUV Lab are working with Mechanical Engineering research scientist Dr. Michael Benjamin to launch a new MIT class, 2.S01: Introduction to Autonomous Underwater Vehicles.
This spring, 12 students are taking a deep dive into autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and exploring theoretical and practical aspects of the AUV design process.
The class covers fundamentals of naval architecture, electrical systems design, mechanical design, and software design. Students are working to assemble their own AUVs using a kit of parts and guidance from instructors, beginning with core electronics and building out a full vehicle for deployment.
Students will carry out waterproofing vacuum tests, pre-launch sub-system and dockside tests, and in-water low-level control tuning runs. They will also construct autonomy missions; first in simulation, followed by in-water autonomous missions to conduct an environmental survey in the Charles River. The final labs in the class will include group competitions with in-water challenges.
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Pictured: A Sea Beaver II AUV in the Charles River during dockside testing. MIT Sea Grant AUV Lab engineer Michael Sacarny (top) and research scientist Dr. Supun Randeni (below) work with students to build their AUVs. (Images courtesy of Supun Randeni and Michael Sacarny) | |
STREAM Grant Spotlight | Dudley Middle School Miniboat update | |
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With funding from MIT Sea Grant's STREAM program, Dudley Middle School science teacher Stacy Lynch launched an initiative utilizing the Educational Passages Miniboat Program. The students are organized into six teams to tackle all aspects of designing, building, and preparing their own miniboat for its voyage, from integrating sensors to building a website to report the data:
- Deck Team
- Hull and Keel Team
- Launch Team
- Media Team
- Sail Team
- Tech Team
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The Hull and Keel Team painted the first coat of antifouling paint during week 12.
(Image: DMS Media Team)
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Special Issue of Oceanography | 36 Sea Grant articles covering topics from applied education to ocean acidification | |
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Sea Grant’s work in coastal communities across the U.S. takes center stage in a special issue of Oceanography. The journal features 36 articles from over 175 Sea Grant authors across the network covering diverse topics from aquaculture to marine debris.
Explore MIT Sea Grant contributions:
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Page 26: Centering Knowledge Co-Production in Sustainability Science (Weaving Traditional Ecological Knowledge and STEM in a Climate Adaptation and Resilience Partnership)
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Page 54: Applied Education Programming (SeaPerch II)
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Page 78: National Ocean and Coastal Acidification Response
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Page 149: "Seaglass" Sea Surface Temperature Visualization
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International Connections | MIT Sea Grant welcomes visitors from Greece and the Pacific Islands | |
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Exchanging environmental expertise with visitors from the Pacific Islands
(March 22, 2024)
A group of visiting scientists and leaders from seven Pacific Island nations visited MIT Sea Grant as a part of a program with World Boston, "Sustainability and Economic Development in the Blue Economy: A Sub-Regional Project for the Cook Islands, the Marshall Islands, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, and Vanuatu."
The delegation toured MIT Sea Grant (below), discussed the role of universities in the blue economy, and shared their respective environmental expertise, from fisheries to climate disaster management. The visitors were invited to the U.S. through the Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program arranged by American Councils for International Education.
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Greek government representatives visit MIT MechE and MIT Sea Grant
(April 12, 2024)
Representatives from the Greek government visited MIT Mechanical Engineering and MIT Sea Grant this month — Nikos Dendias, the Minister of National Defense of Greece, and Konstantinos Kyranakis, Deputy Minister of Digital Governance.
The visitors met with Professor Michael Triantafyllou (Director of MIT Sea Grant), Professor Themistoklis Sapsis (Director of the Center for Ocean Engineering), Professor of Naval Engineering Andrew Gillespy (Director of the Naval Construction and Engineering Program), Research Scientist Michael Benjamin, and others at MIT Sea Grant, the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and the Marine Autonomy Lab at the MIT Sailing Pavilion (below; Image courtesy of Nikos Dendias).
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Congratulations José del Águila Ferrandis | PhD Thesis Defense | |
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José del Águila Ferrandis, who works at MIT Sea Grant under the supervision of Professor Michael Traintafyllou, successfully defended his Computational and Mechanical Engineering PhD thesis on March 15, 2024.
Congratulations José!
José studies hydrodynamics and non-linear motions of floating objects, from ships to offshore infrastructure, using computational fluid dynamics and machine learning.
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Thesis Title:
Exploring Complex Problems in Fluid Dynamics: from CFD to Experiments Leveraging ML
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