February 13 - 14 marked our Year 3 Program Review. We hosted colleagues and program managers from NOAA's Office of Coast Survey and dove deep into the various projects that our team has been working on over the past year. Programming included two full days of presentations, lightning talks, and panels from staff, students, industry partners, and collaborators. We appreciate the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute for providing use of their meeting facilities.

COMIT and NOAA's Office of Coast Survey (with some special guests)

at the FL Fish and Wildlife Research Institute

We also want to thank the St. Petersburg Innovation District and the Maritime Defense and Technology Hub for sponsoring and hosting our fun (and educational!) social event featuring student research posters, a display of our uncrewed surface vessel (USV) TREVOR (Test Robotics Environment Vehicle for Ocean Research), and tasty fare from not one, but two local food trucks! 😋

Our two-day review concluded with COMIT student lightning talks and industry-partner invitees joining panel discussions covering crowdsourced bathymetry, credentials on autonomous piloting, and student opportunities and experiences in the ocean science fields.

COMIT staff show the inner workings of TREVOR at the

Maritime Defense and Technology Hub in St. Petersburg

Recent COMIT graduate Mark Musset gives a lightning talk on his master's project,

investigating use of transit backscatter data to scout for manganese nodules

Dr. Stephan O'Brien talks about site selection for a multibeam backscatter calibration line in the West Florida Nearshore Region

Roxann Vistocci, Sherryl Gilbert and Dr. Heather O'Leary ready to survey GOMCON attendees about perceptions of seafood safety and provide potential students with information about joining COMIT.

COMIT and FCMaP's GOMCON 2024 session

Matt Hommeyer with panel participants from Saildrone, USF, and Fugro

**Keep reading to find the complete list of COMIT presentations

and posters from GOMCON 2024**

Dr. Yonggang Liu accepted a position as a full Faculty member at the USF College of Marine Science. Dr. Liu's contributions to COMIT remain strong with developments in ocean circulation applications used in many aspects of our mapping initiatives.

Dr. Kris Krasnosky recently departed COMIT to focus on his oceanographic technology consulting firm, Seaward Science. Dr. Krasnosky is currently writing a software stack for the Florida Institute of Oceanography's new ROV for the RV Western Flyer. He will also be sailing with Ocean Exploration Trust on the Nautilus this summer.

Dr. Jing Chen has also taken an exciting new opportunity in California. He will continue to work with COMIT to wrap some of the modeling work he's been working on as he gets settled in his new position.

Student Spotlight

Bea Combs-Hintze recently received a scholarship from the Hydrographic Society of America to attend the 2024 GeoHab (Marine Geological and Biological Habitat Mapping) Conference in Arendal, Norway, May 6 - 10!

Bea continues to utilize COMIT's USV, TREVOR, equipped with a mulitibeam sonar device, to capture community scale details of sea floor habitat - augmenting her studies of seagrass dynamics in Tampa Bay.

With assistance from COMIT engineers, Bea conducts sonar trials with various objects in the test tank.

Your eyes are not deceiving you!

Testing takes a creative turn.

PhD Candidate, Alex Ilich, presented a live demo of MultiscaleDTM at GOMCON 2024's Tools Cafe. Alex created this R-package for analyzing bathymetric (and topographic) data by calculating a suite of quantitative measures to characterize the seafloor including slope, curvature, and roughness. These metrics are useful across many disciplines from species distribution modelling and habitat characterization to geomorphology and engineering.

Way to go, Alex!

Alex shows a GOMCON attendee the ropes of his software MultiscaleDTM

MultiscaleDTM on display at the Tools Cafe

Snippets

COMIT and the College of Marine Science took a trip to the State Capitol in Tallahassee on February 6th to advocate and educate for ocean research. It was a beautiful day for a fish fry, hosted by the Florida Institute of Oceanography, and important to be a presence amongst other ocean research, protection, and education organizations, and to have conversations with lawmakers during Florida’s legislative session. 

A beautiful day at the Florida State Capitol

for FIO's Oceans Day

Roxann Vistocci attended NOAA's Women in the Sciences Leadership Workshop in Princeton, NJ on April 16th & 17th. The dynamic group (pictured above, in front of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory) spent an inspiring two days with facilitator Chris Olex, learning all about our different personality styles, the brain science behind our behaviors, and SO much more!

The Florida Coastal Mapping Program (FCMaP) held their 2024 Annual Summit as a hybrid meeting, online and in St. Petersburg, March 26-27, 2024. COMIT were in attendance and also presenting! Dr. Jing Chen talked about the importance of coastal bathymetric changes on regional water levels and circulation using the Tampa Bay Coastal Ocean Model (TBCOM) and served on a panel discussing data challenges. Sarah Grasty continued to champion the Crowd the Bay crowdsourced bathymetry project and participated in a virtual lightning talk – giving attendees a quick, yet comprehensive overview of the project and its phases of implementation.

Dr. Jing Chen speaks to the FCMaP Symposium attendees in St. Petersburg, FL

Sarah Grasty gives a virtual CSB lighting talk

The College of Charleston campus

College of Charleston (CoC) alumna and master’s student, Maggy Hanley, joined Operations Manager, Matt Hommeyer, to represent COMIT at the 2024 BEAMS Symposium from April 12-14. This was the CoC's BEnthic Acoustic Mapping and Survey (BEAMS) Program’s 3rd annual event which provides an opportunity for students to share their research while networking with industry professionals and academic institutions.

Matt Hommeyer talking to a student about our program at the COMIT booth

Session 25.1 The Present and Future of Ocean and Coastal Mapping Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico:

Selecting a site for a multibeam backscatter calibration line in the West Florida Nearshore Region

S. J. O'Brien, M. Hommeyer, C. Lembke, A. Silverman, S. A. Murawski; The University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL

Session 25.1 The Present and Future of Ocean and Coastal Mapping Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico:

Glider-derived Bathymetry to Aid and Supplement Coastal Mapping Priorities

S. T. Beckwith, C. Lembke; University of South Florida, Saint Petersburg, FL

Session 25.1 The Present and Future of Ocean and Coastal Mapping Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico:

Building a Crowdsourced Bathymetry Program in Tampa Bay (and Beyond!)

S. E. Grasty1, H. Clark1, M. Luther1, A. Silverman1, K. Erickson2, S. Gilbert1, C. Simoniello3, S. Murawski1; 1University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL, 2Florida Institute of Oceanography, St. Petersburg, FL, 3Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System, College Station, TX

Session 25.2 The Present and Future of Ocean and Coastal Mapping Infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico:

The Tampa Bay Bathymetry Experiment: Evaluating a Multi-Layer Approach to Shallow Water Mapping

D. English, S. Murawski, C. Hu, M. Hommeyer, S. Grasty, C. Dietrick, M. Luther, Y. Xie, S. O'Brien, S. Gilbert; USF - College of Marine Science, St. Petersburg, FL

Session P1 Tuesday Rise and Shine Poster Session:

Hydrodynamic response to bathymetric changes in Tampa Bay, Florida

J. Chen, Y. Liu, R. Weisberg, S. Murawski, S. Gilbert, D. Naar, L. Zheng, M. Hommeyer, C. Dietrick, M. Luther, C. Hapke; University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL

Session P1 Tuesday Rise and Shine Poster Session:

Multispectral Multibeam Sonar to make Connections between Community Dynamics and Landscape Changes of Seagrass Meadows

B. L. Combs-Hintze, S. Murawski, D. Naar, K. Krasnosky, S. O'Brian, M. Hommeyer, B. Furman, M. Miranda, C. Lembke; University of South Florida, Saint Petersburg, FL

Session P2 - Wednesday Rise and Shine Poster Session:

West Florida Shelf Flushing Events Recorded by the Long-Term Moored Observations: Supporting the Hypothesis of Red Tide Seasonal Prediction

L. S. Dudney, Y. Liu; University of Southern Florida, St. Petersburg, FL.