NSF Award
1600969
The Historically Black Colleges and Universities-Undergraduate Program (HBCU-UP) Research Initiation Awards (RIAs) provide support to STEM junior faculty at HBCUs who are starting to build a research program, as well as for mid-career faculty who may have returned to the faculty ranks after holding an administrative post or who need to redirect and rebuild a research program. Faculty members may pursue research at their home institution, at an NSF-funded Center, at a research intensive institution or at a national laboratory. The RIA projects are expected to help further the faculty member's research capability and effectiveness, to improve research and teaching at his or her home institution, and to involve undergraduate students in research experiences. With support from the National Science Foundation, Savannah State University (SSU) will conduct research aimed at understanding the influence of physical dynamics on the mesopelagic community structure and its role in top predator ecology. This project will be used to enhance teaching and learning at SSU and thus, is geared for increasing marketable quantitative skills in undergraduate education and for preparing our diverse undergraduates for graduate school or the job market. The research and educational efforts will contribute to the mission of SSU's College of Sciences and Technology (COST) to "delivering high quality education, scholarship, and research in STEM" by expanding its existing research capacity. In addition, by providing the opportunities for undergraduates to participate in cutting-edge oceanographic research and gain mentorship in advanced oceanographic data methods, this project addresses the need to equip a diverse student population for the next generation of geosciences, particularly with the research and quantitative skills that will be in greatest demand in the coming years/decades.<br/><br/><br/>The goal of the proposed study is to understand the relationships among the oceanography of the mesopelagic community and marine mammal top predators. The specific aims of this project are to: 1) describe the temporal variability of the physical oceanography of the region; 2) describe the temporal variability in the mesopelagic community; and 3) determine temporal linkages among the physical oceanographic setting, mesopelagic prey field, and vocalizing deep-diving marine mammals. This project will result in the application of sensors in a novel way, providing an example of the application and design of multi-sensor mooring package specifically targeted for the measurements of complex ecosystem interactions ranging from the physical habitat and the mesopelagic prey community all the way to apex predators. The findings from this study will provide a great step towards improving the study of marine top predators and their prey, whose focus is shifting from distribution and abundance to ecosystem interactions. This project will be conducted in collaboration with Duke University.
