Ivar G. Babb

Sustainable coastal sensor networks: technologies and challenges

This paper describes a distributed sensor network for a coastal maritime security system. This concept incorporates a network of small passive and active multi-phenomenological unattended sensors and shore based optical sensors to detect, classify, and track submerged threat objects approaching high value coastal assets, such as ports, harbors, residential, commercial, and military facilities and areas. The network of unattended, in-water sensors perform the initial detection, classification, and coarse tracking and then queues shore based optical laser radar sensors. These shore-based sensors perform a queued sector search to develop a refined track on the submerged threat objects that were initially detected by the unattended sensor network. Potential threat objects include swimmers, small unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), small submarines, and submerged barges. All of these threats have the potential to transport threat objects such as explosives, chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear materials. Reliable systems with low false alarm rates (FAR) are proposed. Tens to hundreds of low cost passive sensors are proposed to be deployed conjunctively with several active acoustic and optical sensors in threat and facility dependant patterns to maximize the detection, tracking and classification of submerged threat objects. The integrated command and control system and novel microbial fuel cells to power these sensor networks are also described.

Classroom of the Sea: problem-based learning for the deaf

The Classroom of the Sea (COS) Project is an interactive problem-based learning environment embedded in marine science for deaf high school students to assist them in understanding and communicating scientific concepts. COS mixes a real and virtual environment for the students and teachers aboard a research vessel as they gather marine science data to address a problem. The students note the locations of their samples and record them on the ships LAN. Once the students return to their classrooms, students, faculty and researchers work to place the data they have collected on to web sites enabling students to experiment with real data, generate hypotheses, test these hypotheses and write up their results. Knowledge, attitudes and behaviors (KABs) and self-efficacy measures related to science literacy and procedures of the students are collected to measure changes.

Loss of an erect sponge on a rock reef in Long Island Sound (north-west Atlantic)

Stratford Shoal is a topographic high dividing the west and central basins of Long Island Sound (north-west Atlantic). The southern end of the shoal has a linear, north–south-tending boulder reef along the crest. Repeated observations of the reef using remote and diver-held cameras from 1991 to 2010 found an apparently stable epibenthic community dominated by Haliclona oculata (branching sponge), Astrangia poculata (northern star coral), Mytilus edulis (blue mussel) and erect bryozoa. In 2012, when the boulder reef area was imaged as part of a benthic habitat mapping project, A. poculata was still abundant, but no H. oculata was found. A number of mechanisms (e.g. species interactions, disease, recruitment failure, thermal stress, sediment loading, freshwater input and physical disturbance) may have contributed, individually or synergistically, to the community shift. However, because of the ad hoc and aperiodic nature of the observations, drivers of the shift are indeterminate. As a result, whether the observed changes reflect a short-term disturbance or a long-term community state remains unclear, as do the effects of changes in the identity of the dominant species.

Miniature dissolved oxygen and turbulence optical sensor for river and coastal environmental applications

This paper describes an innovative miniature optical sensor for predicting dissolved oxygen concentrations and measuring turbulence in river and littoral water columns. The dissolved oxygen and turbulence sensor consists of a single-frequency laser transmitter and a photodetector on which the scattered light from the turbulent water at the base of a dam or spillway is coherently mixed with a sample of the transmitted beam. This miniature sensor could be used both upstream and downsteam of dams and weirs to predict the amount of dissolved oxygen and turbulence in these waters. It could also be used on mobile platforms, such as unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), to monitor the edges of biological or chemical plumes or for wake follow platforms, schools of fish or marine mammals or on stationary unattended underwater sensors to monitor natural aeration and turbulence in littoral and riverine waters. Arrays of fixed unattended sensors could be used to detect the wake of transiting submerged vehicles, scuba divers, marine mammals or large schools of fish. A mobile platform equipped with a miniature sensor could to be cued to the general location and depth of an underwater target and then the platform could use this small aperture sensor to acquire and follow the wake. This dissolved oxygen and turbulence sensor system could be miniaturized and packaged into a very small volume; approximately the size of a wristwatch.

Miniature optical turbulence sensor for coastal environmental, homeland security, and military monitoring applications

This paper describes an innovative miniature optical sensor for measuring the turbulence in water columns. The turbulence sensor consists of a single-frequency laser transmitter and a photodetector on which the scattered light from the turbulent water is coherently mixed with a sample of the transmitted beam. This miniature sensor could be used on mobile platforms, such as unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs), to wake follow platforms, schools of fish or marine mammals or on stationary unattended underwater sensors to monitor natural turbulence in littoral waters. Arrays of fixed unattended sensors could be used to detect the wake of transiting submerged vehicles, scuba divers, marine mammals or large schools of fish. A mobile platform equipped with a miniature turbulence sensor could to be cued to the general location and depth of an underwater target and then the platform could use this small aperture sensor to acquire and follow the wake. This turbulence sensor system could be miniaturized and packaged into a very small volume; approximately the size of a wristwatch.

The Aquanaut Program

The Aquanaut Program (AP) began in 1988 as an educational initiative of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Undersea Research Center at The University of Connecticut at Avery Point (NURC-UCAP). At its inception, the AP was a purely experiential program with students and teachers spending one day on board a ship observing scientists and diving in an occupied submersible. In response to feedback of participating teachers the AP evolved into a more rigorous, yearlong project that includes introduction to a research topic, interactions with a research mentor, hands-on field research during the summer months, and subsequent data analysis and presentation during the fall semester. The AP is open to all secondary schools in the Northeast Region served by NURC-UCAP and typically supports about 100 students and 20 teachers per year. During its history, the AP has enrolled 885 students and 128 teachers from schools throughout the regions served by NURC-UCAP. This includes 28 students from high schools in Michigan who have been involved with a similar program in the Great Lakes and 19 students from Israel.