The approach could help scientists better understand how the ocean transports heat, carbon, and nutrients around the planet, while improving forecasting, search-and-rescue efforts, and tracking of marine debris and oil spills.
🔗 Read more: buff.ly/UtC9VQM
🌊 @nickpizzooceans.bsky.social
🌊 A team of researchers, including #URIGSO's @nickpizzooceans.bsky.social, has developed a new AI-powered way to study ocean currents.
#GOFLOW uses thermal images from weather satellites already in orbit to map ocean surface currents in unprecedented detail, with no new hardware required. 🧪
#URIGSO faculty, staff, and graduate students supported every step of the experience, from fieldwork and instrument recovery dives to guidance with MATLAB and final projects, helping students build confidence and practical skills along the way.
➡️ Read more in URI Magazine: buff.ly/jbKGxVY
Students on the deck of the boat prepare for sensor deployment
A student drives the boat.
Student and professor on the boat deck, deploying a sensor.
🌊 🪢 URI honors students explored Narragansett Bay with #URIGSO! They developed skills in boat handling, knot tying, sensor deployment, navigation, & data analysis while gaining a deeper understanding of the ocean as a connected system of physics, ecosystems, nutrient cycles, and marine life.
☀️ 🪹 🌼 A sure sign of spring: our ospreys have returned to the University of Rhode Island Narragansett Bay Campus!
Thanks to the Rhode Island Energy crew, who added a platform to a utility pole on campus this week, for keeping the birds safe and preventing any disruptions to electric service!
➡️ Tune into 'Gulf Restoration Live! Working on the Waves' tomorrow, Tuesday, April 14, from 11 a.m. to noon: buff.ly/FZrLbkQ
📸 Sophia Meliville, URI Inner Space Center
🌊 🚢 Ever wonder what kind of roles are needed for a successful restoration expedition? Join National Marine Sanctuary Foundation & #URIGSO's Inner Space Center live to hear from a variety of talented professionals as they describe their jobs at sea. This event is great for younger audiences, too!
Take a timeline cleanse to watch clam mating in action and the resulting clam babies. External fertilization is a hoot!
This NOAA-funded project is a collaboration between partners: Environmental Protection Agency, University of Connecticut, University of Hawaii, University of Rhode Island
In theory, dissolved limestone entering groundwater could support shell growth—but in a highly variable estuary, those signals are hard to detect. Together, the lab + field studies help scientists understand how land-based practices may shape coastal ecosystems & what that means for mCDR strategies.
#URIGSO postdoc Teresa Schwemmer is testing how limestone-treated seawater affects quahog larvae during their first 48 hours. The work connects to a field study in Winnapaug Pond, comparing juvenile growth near vs. farther from a golf course that applied limestone. 🌊 🦑 🧪 @jaimepalter.bsky.social
🌊 Her takeaway: meaningful policy takes collaboration and compromise. Read all about her experience as a NOAA Sea Grant Knauss Fellow: buff.ly/9JzMW32
Diana, on one of her last days in the office, posing with the front page of her boss’s Whale CHARTS Act after it was introduced.
But the work she’s most proud of? Helping advance the Whale CHARTS Act, a bill that would direct NOAA to improve whale habitat maps and develop near-real-time whale detection technologies to help prevent deadly ship strikes.
Diana and her fellowship mentor, Adam McBride, on the day their boss introduced the first bill Diana worked on: the Climate Change and Health Promotion Act
On the Hill, Diana worked across the aisle to move bipartisan efforts forward, leading two Congressional letters to the Department of the Interior on reforestation strategy and staffing shortages at the National Park Service.
RI Sea Grant fellows during the Knauss Graduation Ceremony. Pictured from left to right: Danielle Becker, GSO’s Asta Habtemichael, Rafeed Hussain, and GSO’s Diana Fontaine
Diana in front of the Capitol. Credit: Rafeed Hussain
#URIGSO alum Diana Fontaine, Ph.D. ’24, shares how her year as a Sea Grant Knauss Marine Policy Fellow allowed her to bring her ocean science background into the policy world, making a real-world impact in the office of Congresswoman @dorismatsui.bsky.social 🌊 🧪 🦑
Read more: buff.ly/9JzMW32
🌊 From the smallest organisms to top predators, ocean life depends on phytoplankton.
But new research from #URIGSO's Keisuke Inomura & colleagues shows climate change could make them less nutritious, potentially reshaping marine food webs.
➡️ Read more from MIT: news.mit.edu/2026/climate...
The URI team includes #URIGSO grad students Philip Yang and Celeste Weidemann, and URI CELS x #URIGSO Professor Andy Davies. Sophia Melville of GSO's Inner Space Center is on board to document the expedition and run live ship-to-shore streams.
Watch to learn more about the ALBEX lander, developed and built right at the URI Bay Campus: buff.ly/d6BD2sB
Two landers were deployed, and one was recovered after nearly a year on the seafloor. The lander’s instruments measure temperature, salinity, oxygen, turbidity, & sediment flux to the seafloor, while capturing imagery and tracking currents & biological activity in the water column. 🌊 🦑 🧬
🪸 Members of the Marine Ecology & Technology Lab are off the coast of Louisiana & Mississippi, deploying and recovering ALBEX seafloor landers to track long-term conditions near deep-sea corals. 🌊 🦑 🧪
This work supports Gulf restoration following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill: buff.ly/5229YMN
Dozens of state leaders and hundreds of URI students, faculty, and staff celebrated the University’s success and impact during URI Day at the State House. Representing #URIGSO, J.P. Walsh’s COAST Lab shared locally relevant research on microplastics & long-term shoreline change.
➡️ buff.ly/YCjQyg2
This work contributes to a growing body of research at URI. With the nation's first offshore wind farm just miles away, URI has brought together a host of world-class experts across disciplines to better understand the sustained impacts of renewable energy siting, construction, and implementation.
Jonah crab collected on a local vessel
Using a cutting-edge stable isotope geolocation approach, he'll track the movement and habitat use of Jonah crab, an increasingly important commercial species in Southern New England. His findings will inform fisheries management and marine spatial planning in the region. 🦀 🦑 🌊
Emmanuel smiling on a vessel in front of a windmill.
Congrats to #URIGSO's Emmanuel Oyewole, who has received the Nature Conservancy-URI Student Research Award! His work examines whether artificial reef effects of offshore wind infrastructure boost local biological production or concentrate existing marine biomass from surrounding fishing grounds 🌊 🦑
With 66,000+ volumes (including books, journals, theses/dissertations, maps, atlases, digital media, and special collections) spanning oceanography, marine biology, fisheries, atmospheric chemistry, and coastal habitats, the library is a remarkable resource for URI researchers across disciplines.
📖 Looking for an obscure paper, resources to support your research, an old cruise report, or just a beautiful spot to study with views of Narragansett Bay? Six miles east of URI's Kingston campus sits the Pell Marine Science Library at the URI Bay Campus!
Are you interested in climate change, fisheries & marine resource management? 🌊 🐟 Then I highly recommend recent paper by Malin Pinsky @ucscscience.bsky.social and Sarah Smith @universityofri.bsky.social @urigso.bsky.social
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
🌊 The Blue MBA — the first program of its kind in the U.S. — just got even better.
Now fully online, URI's interdisciplinary program blends business, oceanography, and marine affairs to prepare you for a career in the growing blue economy.
Enrolling now for Fall 2026: buff.ly/SOWvi5t
From the Cap'n Bert to the lab, this is long-term science in action. 🦑🧪 🌊
⤵ Watch the full clip: buff.ly/VduTakz
🌊 #URIGSO's Long-Term Plankton Time Series is one of the most valuable continuous records of ocean ecosystem change in the world. Each week, researchers head out on Narragansett Bay to collect samples that track shifts in plankton communities, nutrient cycles, & the health of our changing ocean. 🦑🧪
