USF Researchers Show Off New Vessel

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 ST. PETERSBURG - The ocean researchers at the University of South Florida have a new toy. It's 115 feet long and it will take 21 people up to 300 miles off shore to study some of the most serious scientific quandaries of the day.

"We don't know as much about the ocean as we should know," said William Hogarth, dean of USF's College of Marine Science. But with the state-of-the-art equipment on the WeatherBird II, USF will be closer to understanding red tide, climate change, the increasing acidification of the ocean and other underwater mysteries.

USF showed off its $2.1 million acquisition today.

"We know our future depends on our ability to build sustainable communities that both protect and promote the oceans around us," said USF President Judy Genshaft in remarks to state and local officials who came to see the vessel. "We see the College of Marine Science as a centerpiece in that effort and the WeatherBird II as the vehicle that will carry us to those exciting days of discovery ahead."

The university worked for years to replace its aging research vessel, which had become increasingly unreliable, Hogarth said. Appropriations to buy a new vessel were turned down and vetoed, but last year, the university got the chance to buy the WeatherBird from a private environmental study group that was going out of business.

The bigger vessel will allow more researchers to spend a longer time on the water, said Rob Walker, program coordinator for the Florida Oceanographic Institute, a consortium of Florida's public universities, private higher education institutions and state agencies involved in marine research. USF will partially recoup the cost of the vessel by leasing it to consortium members.

The software and sensor technology will enable them to collect more data directly from the ocean, rather than having to scoop up water and bring it back to a land-based lab. And as they detect changes in ocean water chemistry, they will be able to record precisely when and where the changes occurred.

The WeatherBird's first mission will be next month, when it heads out to check the weather buoys in the waters around Florida. The buoys provide the local data that Internet users find on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Web site.