returning to galveston bay texas a&m oceanographers continue studying post-harvey coast aggie oceanographers and other collaborative researchers visited galveston bay on the r/v trident to continue studying the effects of hurricane harvey on the marine ecosystemapr 11 2018group photo of all the researchers aboard on r/v trident on march 24 (photo by: chris mouchyn)on march 24 dr jessica fitzsimmons assistant professor in the department of oceanography at texas a&m university led aggie oceanographers aboard the r/v trident for a one-day cruise in galveston bay a range of undergraduate and graduate students from the department of oceanography and other collaborative departments were involved in this cruise to study the ocean environment along the texas coast the main goal of this cruise was to answer the big question – what were the effects of hurricane harvey on galveston bay said fitzsimmons the first cruise in this series of research cruises was in june 2017 led by dr shari yvon-lewis who is a professor and also the oceanography department head as an opportunity for her graduate students and collaborating students to collect and analyze samples then hurricane harvey hit texas a few months later in late august 2017 since then fitzsimmons yvon-lewis and other research faculty in the department of oceanography have gathered high impact learning and research funds to continuously visit their ocean backyard galveston bay not only to provide access to the ocean to collect samples but also to develop a collaborative research team to explore the coastal oceans response to contaminants released during hurricane harvey two more cruises were completed in september 2017 soon after harvey and in november 2017 to assess how the ecosystem in galveston bay had recovered from harvey the march 2018 outing was the fourth such cruise to visit galveston bay more than half a year after harvey the march cruise was meant to capture the final time point in the seasonality of galveston bay said fitzsimmons now we have a complete dataset over all four seasons including wet and dry seasons and also immediately following hurricane harveygraduate student laramie jensen (left) from the department of oceanography sampling seawater from pump and undergraduate student alexa mendoza (right) from the department of chemistry (photo by: bumsoo kim)dr shari von-lewis (left) and her graduate student stanford goodwin (right) from the department of oceanography collecting seawater sample from niskin bottle (photo by: bumsoo kim)undergraduate student reagan lucas from department of chemistry lowering the pump line (photo by: bumsoo kim)graduate student damian simonini (left) from the department of oceangoraphy and jerry chen (right) from department of civil engineering collecting sediment sample from grab (photo by: bumsoo kim)during the cruise students collected various environmental samples from seawater and the sediments at each station a ctd (conductivity temperature depth) sensor instrument was deployed to measure temperature salinity and depth of the water column and a secchi disk was deployed to measure turbidity seawater was sampled from a niskin bottle to measure various biogeochemical parameters including dissolved oxygen inorganic and organic carbon ph bacterial and phytoplankton abundances toxic contaminants and pollutants etc also samples for trace metals (such as dissolved iron and toxic lead) macronutrients petroleum oil compounds and suspended particles were collected using a pump deployed into the seawater from both the surface and near the seafloor sediment samples were collected by manually lowering a grab sampler to measure toxic heavy metals bacteria and organic abundances a symposium effects of hurricane harvey on galveston bay was held on jan 19 by the department of oceanography to introduce the cruises successful progress and results the symposium was attended by students faculty staff and local stakeholders including texas sea grant through this opportunity like never before we were able to unite our graduate students and faculty to access the ocean fitzsimmons said throughout the oceanography program and across the college of geosciences we are all interested in accessing the ocean we all have these small ideas that we need access to seawater in order to explore for example sampling and analytical methods tests calibrating and testing oceanography instruments and designing new experiments we now have that opportunity in our ocean backyard we can get our students to gain experience and get trained at both the undergraduate and graduate levels it is really exciting through this program we have developed a seasonal snapshot of a small but important anthropogenically-influenced ocean body galveston bay we have incredible coverage of a large suite of contaminant and biogeochemical parameters that are coming together into a great story following hurricane harvey they are open to any other faculty or researchers interested in collaborating with their interdisciplinary research team fitzsimmons saiddr jessica fitzsimmons and her students (photo by: bumsoo kim)dr shari von-lewis and her students (photo by: bumsoo kim)in addition to yvon-lewis and fitzsimmons these collaborative researchers have supported and were involved in this study: drs kathryn shamberger daniel thornton and gerardo gold bouchot in the department of oceanography and dr kung-hui (bella) chu in the department of civil engineering they are also collaborating with researchers at texas a&m galveston led by dr antonietta quiggphillip fitzsimmons preparing lunch for the students (photo by: bumsoo kim)group photo in the kitchen of r/v trident (photo by: bumsoo kim)by bumsoo kim