Once everyone was on board and our equipment was all set up, the ship got underway on Saturday. It didn't take long before we saw our first chunks of sea ice floating by the ship.
Already we have seen more sea ice this year than on our entire 2002 Arctic cruise. We were much farther west, out in the Chukchi Sea, in 2002 and this year we will be heading east up into the Canadian Arctic.
For the next 3-weeks, I will be a board the Icebreaker USCGC Healy in the Arctic Ocean. I am taking part in a research cruise with scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and several other schools. It's great to be back -- I was fortunate to spend a total of 6 weeks on the Healy back in 2002. At that time, we spent 3 weeks in the Bering Sea to the south, and 3 weeks in the Chukchi Sea northwest of Alaska, where I conducted a large part of my PhD thesis research.
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In mid-August 2013, Dr. Tingzhuang Yan, Dr. Len Pietrafesa, and Dr. Paul T. Gayes updated their modeled, hurricane outlook based on changing climate factors (a common process for all hurricane outlooks).
Research scientist Jenna Hill is assiting a research team in the Arctic on the USCGC HEALY. See the ship's location in near real time or see snap shots from the ship's bridge here: 
Between August 3 and 8, 2011, Kevin Xu, Preston O'Brien-Gayes, and Kyle St. Clair from Coastal Carolina University will be on a research cruise in the Northern Gulf of Mexico. This project was funded by NSF RAPID program to study sedimentation from the 2011 flooding of Mississippi River. Collaborators include geochemists and geological oceanographers Drs. J.P.
Rich Viso, assistant director of the School of Coastal and Marine Systems Science, Rick Peterson, marine science lecturer, and graduate student Leigha Peterson (no relation) leave Myrtle Beach on Dec. 7 and travel through Atlanta and Santiago, Chile, to the tip of South America, crossing the treacherous 500-mile Drake Passage.
Between August 15 and 22, 2011, R.C. Mickey and Brian Quigley from Coastal Carolina University will be on a hypoxia research cruise in the Northern Gulf of Mexico. This project was funded by NOAA to study coastal processes controlling the formation of hypoxic water in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Collaborators include several geochemists and oceanographers from Texas A&M University at College Station and Galveston.
Center Research Specialist, Shinobu Okano is mapping deep coral reefs in the Atlantic Ocean near the Gulf Stream offshore of Florida. She will sail from Pensacola to Key West and on to the Atlantic. She will come into port in Jacksonville for two days and then map the 500 m isobath around the Florida Peninsula back to Gulf Port. This work is being undertaken with University of South Florida.