In the field of open ocean aquaculture engineering, my primary focus is the design and evaluation of fish cage and mooring systems using physical and numerical models. To validate these design methods, considerable effort is made to obtain the appropriate field data. For example, the motion and tension dynamics of the fish cage and mooring system deployed at the UNH Open Ocean Aquaculture demonstration site (see www.ooa.unh.edu) was examined using data obtained from accelerometers on the cage and load cells throughout the mooring lines and compared to modeling results.
Another research area involves the operation of a wave/environmental instrumentation mooring at the open ocean aquaculture site. The system includes wave accelerometers, temperature and salinity instruments, a turbidity sensor, a fluorometer, a dissolved oxygen sensor, an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler and a spread spectrum telemetry system for real-time data acquisition. In addition to this monitoring system, I also use an ADCP with directional wave processing software on a separate mooring system to validate the accelerometers on various wave measurements buoys in the Gulf of Maine.
I also have a research focus in oil spill response and remediation technologies. This area of investigation includes (1) the design of oil boom configurations in high currents, (2) the development of devices to remediate oil contaminated estuarine sediments and (3) the use of a meso-scale oil weathering flume facility to research the fate of non-floating oils. |
