Travis Miles gave the talk “Hurricane Gliders” on December 9th as a webinar to the Underwater Gliders User Group (UG2). The transcript from the talk is located here.

The full documentary is available on YouTube here.

Hi, Department Chairs and Center Directors. Rutgers Giving Day will be Wednesday, March 24, 2021 and applications to participate are due on December 11. Rutgers Giving Day is an online 24 hour fundraising campaign that is driven by social media and email. A department or center with an existing gift fund/project has the opportunity to become involved this year. Please note the deadline to submit the application to RUF is Friday, December 11, 2020.   If you would like to participate, then please submit the school and program application; one fund per department or center. NOTE: You will have the opportunity to review and edit your page in February, prior to the campaign launch. AMBASSADOR REQUIREMENT: As part of your submission, we will be asking you to confirm a minimum of ten ambassadors who will be responsible for reaching out within their own personal networks to inspire support. Funds leveraging ambassadors have proven to be most successful year after year. All ambassadors will be invited to an ambassador webinar training in early March to ensure success.  Kyle Hartmann, Public Relations Specialist from the Equine Science Center, and I will be offering a Rutgers Giving Day Best Practices presentation in early 2021 to assist you with maximizing this optional initiative for your unit. Feel free to reach out with any questions and/or please forward to the applicable person in your unit. I am available via email at roz.beberman@rutgers.edu and by telephone at 848-932-3593. All the best, Roz

Since the Industrial Revolution began in the mid-18th century, Earth’s oceans have absorbed about one third of the carbon dioxide emitted through human activities. The ensuing roughly 30% increase in ocean acidity has reduced the amount of carbonate available for calcifying organisms such as corals and oysters to construct their skeletons and shells. As ocean acidity continues to climb, these biological structures could begin to dissolve or cost organisms extra energy to maintain, potentially disrupting marine food webs. The rates at which the global ocean is acidifying are unprecedented, but the effects on coastal ecosystems, especially in economically important regions, are not well understood because of a lack of seasonal carbonate chemistry data. Wright-Fairbanks et al. report on an effort to help alleviate the data shortage using an underwater glider equipped with sensors to measure seasonal changes in ocean properties, including pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, and other parameters crucial to understanding local carbonate chemistry. Full article at EOS

The Rutgers 4-H STEM Ambassador Program was established in 2009 by a team of faculty and staff from multiple SEBS/NJAES departments and units. Since then, this dedicated team has learned how to utilize the strengths and resources of each member to best serve traditionally underserved urban youth throughout the state to enrich their interest and competency in science, technology, and engineering. Using the diverse skills and interests of the team along with their shared commitment to the program’s vision and objectives, they have continually refined the STEM Ambassador program over the past 12 years. It is now a nationally recognized model that has been shared through several publications and has been replicated in other states. The team has successfully engaged collaborators from inside and outside the university, across multiple campuses and schools. They are currently designing additional online modules to support the program. Original Award Announcement

Better understanding of the habitat and migration patterns of the North Atlantic Right Whale is a key goal of the Ecosystems and Passive Acoustic Monitoring (ECO-PAM) Project, which is a partnership with RUCOOL, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the University of Rhode Island (URI), and the offshore wind developer Ørsted. RUCOOL recently launched a second glider mission for the three year ECO-PAM project. The glider, RU34, includes oceanographic sampling instrumentation and a state of the art acoustic detection system developed at WHOI to listen for marine mammals while surveying the waters off of New Jersey. The official ECO-PAM website launched this week, which includes details on the project, team members, and access to data. Check it out!

RU33 was recently deployed offshore of Tuckerton, NJ. Glider veterans Captain Chip Haldeman (pictured above) and Nicole Waite brought along a graduate student, Sam Coakley, for his first deployment. The hurricane glider is going to be monitoring the Mid-Atlantic Bight during the close of the 2020 hurricane season as part of a NOAA supported collaborative project through the Mid Atlantic Regional Association Coastal Ocean Observing System (MARACOOS). With an RDI DVL on board the glider (pictured below) we are going to measure the shear in the currents along the gliders track which can drive mixing and the cooling of our warm, summer, surface ocean.