University of South Florida robot uses satellites and Twitter to convey data on ocean conditions– http://news.usf.edu/article/templates/?a=4299&z=123. Solar-powered AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicles) conducts oceanographic transects to sense variety of ocean conditions and events, such as harmful algal blooms, spills of hazardous materials, or detecting ocean sounds, and tweets relevant data to shore.
Posts by Andy Shepard
Deep coral impacts
Investigators funded by NOAA, BOEM, USGS, Census of Marine Life and NSF find impacts of DWH oil spill on deep sea coral ecosystems near the well site– news at http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=123555&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click; publication at http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/03/23/1118029109.full.pdf+html?sid=97130868-7d9b-440f-8d04-618c0157813c.
AUV science
USF gliders survey shelf off FL for temperature, salinity, chlorophyll, turbidity, and dissolved organic matter, and post tracks to http://ooma.marine.usf.edu/CROW/. Glider also deployed following DWH oil spill– http://rucool.marine.rutgers.edu/deepwater/2010/05/the-bass-glider-from-usf-is-in-the-water/.
March recovery
Dauphin Island Sea Lab leads study on microbes that actively degrade oil spill in marshes– http://www.springerlink.com/content/e46g688n71043684/.
Wetlands recovery
Louisiana State University investigators find not all marsh grass recovers the same– Qianxin Lin and Irving A. Mendelssohn. 2012. “Impacts and Recovery of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill on Vegetative Structure and Function of Coastal Salt Marsh in the Northern Gulf of Mexico.” Environ. Sci. Technol. Online at http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es203552p.
DWH settlement
MOEX Offshore 2007 LLC, 10% owner of the lease for the Macondo Well, settles for $90M for Deepwater Horizon oil spill– http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/February/12-ag-231.html