HRI Doctoral Fellow receives fellowship
HRI alumnus Dr. Peter J Etnoyer was awarded $50,000 during the first year of his two-year fellowship with the Schmidt Research Vessel Institute (SRVI). He received his doctorate in August 2009 from the Coastal Marine System Science program at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and will study deep-sea coral growth and distribution with Dr. Tom Shirley of the HRI's Marine Biodiversity and Conservation Laboratory. Etnoyer has accepted a position with the NOAA Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Biomolecular Research at Charleston, South Carolina.

Students conduct beach clean up
Members of the Marine Science Graduate Student Organization at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi organized a beach clean up on November 15, when masters and PhD students joined forces to clean the Corpus Christi Bay side of Ocean Drive from the Ward Island Bridge down to the University Beach. This area is prone to large amounts of trash that wash up on shore or are left behind by visitors. Students filled more than 40 large bags with trash during the event, mostly consisting of plastic bottles. They also collected large items such as a tires, coolers and beach chairs.

HRI lab conducts beach profile surveys to establish baseline of conditions
HRI graduate students working under the supervision of HRI Endowed Associate Research Professor Dr. James Gibeaut in the Coastal and Marine Geospatial Sciences Lab have been conducting beach profile surveys along Mustang and Padre Islands from Port Aransas, Texas, south to Padre Island National Seashore. Three of the students involved in the project are Diana del Angel, Lori Busch and Boris Radosavljevic.
   This work is supported by the Texas Research Development Fund and is establishing a baseline of beach and dune conditions for the area. The group will conduct repeat surveys of the sites to track and understand beach dynamics, especially following major storms. The data will also serve to verify remote sensing data, such as topographic lidar and imagery. Stations in the northern region have been surveyed more frequently due to their accessibility, but some of the sites have not been visited in 10 years. Researchers were happily surprised to find several of the datums corroded but intact and were able to locate, reposition and compare the datums for the decadal interval.