Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross allocated $200 million in disaster funding appropriated by Congress to help fishermen and the businesses and communities that rely upon them to recover and rebuild following hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria in 2017. Funding has also been appropriated and allocated for the disasters that devastated West Coast and Alaskan fishermen from 2014 to 2017. NOAA
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Sea-Bird Scientific, September 2017–The center of Hurricane Irma may have missed Florida’s eastern shore, but its effects did not. Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch operates a network of Sea-Bird Scientific Land/Ocean Biogeochemical Observatories (LOBOs) in the Indian River Lagoon that captured the edge of Irma’s wrath in real time. The peak of the storm occurred just before midnight on September
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Aquabotix is an underwater robotics company that makes underwater drones called autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and remotely-operated vehicles (ROVs), as well as networked underwater cameras. The company has issued a statement that this kind of equipment could be useful for surveying underwater damage to infrastructure at ports, offshore drilling rigs and various submerged coastal structures. They are launching a new
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The U.S. Geological Survey is installing storm-tide sensors today in the Florida Keys to assist with data collection as Hurricane Irma approaches. Nine other sensors were installed in Puerto Rico on Labor Day, Sept. 4, and USGS plans to make further installations on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of Florida Thursday and Friday. Crews stand ready to install as many
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The National Hurricane Center has issued a public advisory stating that Hurricane Irma will move over portions of the Virgin Islands soon, pass near or north of Puerto Rico this afternoon or tonight, pass near or north of the Dominican Republic Thursday and be near the Turks and Caicos and southeastern Bahamas late Thursday. Mandatory evacuation orders have been issued
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