Missions

The target areas in Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico exhibit an array of conditions with differences in depth, water clarity, boat traffic and habitat types, which makes this area a fertile testing ground. This work will be applicable to other coastal areas around Florida and beyond.

Unmanned systems are an excellent choice for undersea threat identification and neutralization. They can operate in contested environments and gather important intelligence, and they are able to solve an increasing number of important strategic problems, all while keeping the warfighter out of harm’s way. They greatly mitigate and manage the digital fog of war.

Eelgrass (Zostera marina) is a valuable coastal habitat in Massachusetts, forming a complex underwater landscape that stabilizes seafloor and adjacent shoreline, filters sediments and nutrients, and provides important habitat for a variety of shallow water species.

Eelgrass (Zostera marina) is a valuable coastal habitat in Massachusetts, forming a complex underwater landscape that stabilizes seafloor and adjacent shoreline, filters the water of sediments and nutrients, and provides important habitat for shallow water species. South of Boston, the bays of Duxbury, Kingston and Plymouth (DKP) form a large embayment whose eelgrass population, once thriving, is now severely diminished.

The Gulf of Maine supports productive shellfisheries that are frequently impacted by harmful algal blooms, causing annual shellfishing closures along a broad swath of the New England coast. Traditional toxin monitoring involves harvesting shellfish, testing the meat for toxins in a lab, and then shutting down fisheries when levels are too high. This approach is labor intensive and after the fact.

Researchers gain valuable information from battery-powered sensors deployed on the ocean floor, sometimes for months at a time. Retrieving data from these sensors typically involves sending out a ship: from a location directly above the sensor, an acoustic modem uploads or “harvests” the data from a sensor, before proceeding to the next sensor.

When operators need to interact with an Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) that is busy running a mission, they typically rely on a laptop and a “deck box” with an acoustic modem from a chase boat. Additionally, due to the range limits of the acoustic modem, they need to be within range of the UUV, typically within roughly 1,000m.