Recent oceanographic observations and a retrospective analysis of nutrients and hydrography over the past five decades have revealed that the principal source of nutrients to the Gulf of Maine, the deep, nutrient-rich continental slope waters that enter at depth through ...

A new pre-operational model of circulation over the Texas-Louisiana continental shelf and slope, based on the Regional Ocean Modelling System (ROMS) is presented. The model is designed with a number of practical applications in mind: to predict oil spill trajectories, ...

The neurotoxic amino acid, domoic acid (DA), is naturally produced by marine phytoplankton and presents a significant threat to the health of marine mammals, seabirds and humans via transfer of the toxin through the foodweb. In humans, acute exposure causes ...

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) are a global problem that affects both human and ecosystem health. One of the most serious and widespread HAB poisoning syndromes is paralytic shellfish poisoning, commonly caused by Alexandrium spp. dinoflagellates. Like many toxic dinoflagellates, Alexandrium ...

Heterokont members of the Pelagophyceae form the massive brown tides that have continually plagued the coastal regions of the eastern U.S. seaboard and the Gulf of Mexico. To gain a better understanding of the photosynthetic competence that may be linked ...

Some motile phytoplankton have the capability to exploit deep sources of nutrients in a vertical migration cycle: photosynthesis in the near-surface layer, transit to depth, uptake of the limiting nutrient and transit back to the surface layer. If all four ...

Paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) is a recurrent and widespread problem in the Gulf of Maine (GOM) caused by the dinoflagellate Alexandrium fundyense. Blooms of this species have been the subject of more than a decade of investigation through the ECOHAB-GOM ...

An ecologically and economically disruptive harmful algal bloom (HAB) affected much of the northeast Pacific margin in 2015, during a prolonged oceanic warm anomaly. Caused by diatoms of the genus Pseudo-nitzschia, this HAB produced the highest particulate concentrations of the ...

Domoic acid is an algal-derived seafood toxin that functions as a glutamate agonist and exerts excitotoxicity via overstimulation of glutamate receptors (AMPA, NMDA) in the central nervous system (CNS). At high (symptomatic) doses, domoic acid is well-known to cause seizures, ...

We extend existing oceanographic sampling methodologies to sample an advecting feature of interest using autonomous robotic platforms. GPS-tracked Lagrangian drifters are used to tag and track a water patch of interest with position updates provided periodically to an autonomous underwater ...