Images

Katie Krueger, a summer intern at the USGS St. Petersburg Coastal and Marine Science Center in St. Petersburg, Florida, uses an optical microscope to pick out foraminifera from Arctic Ocean sediment samples.

Summer intern Katie Krueger (center) and her USGS supervisors: research oceanographer Lisa Robbins (left) and research geologist Jennifer Miselis. Because of her stellar academics and volleyball skills, Krueger was notified of her acceptance to Virginia Tech early in her junior year.

An x-radiograph (top) and photograph (bottom) of an Orbicella faveolata specimen collected from Dry Tortugas National Park in 2008. Note the annual banding couplets of high-and-low density bands. Figure modified from Flannery and Poore, 2013.

Photo of the seafloor in Block Island Sound showing a rock crab and several shrimp on a boulder that is covered with bryozoans. The photo was collected in support of research and management activities (e.g., wind farms and fisheries) along the Rhode Island inner continental shelf.

SCUBA diver working on a calcification station at Fowey Rocks, Biscayne National Park, Florida.

A wall of Desmophyllum dianthus cup corals with bonus octopus neighbor.

A USGS diver carrying a scale bar and clipboard swims above Sombrero Reef, Florida Keys using SCUBA.

USGS diver taking a core of a 100-year-old coral to allow reconstruction of past ocean temperatures in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.

Assessing how storms move sediment during storms provides coastal scientists and managers the information they need to keep coastal communities safe and prosperous. And, lucky for us, provides many opportunities to see great coastal sunsets!

Hurricane Sandy moved a house from barrier island to estuary, in this case into Barnegat Bay, NJ. Waves from extreme storms do the same with barrier island sediment.

Debris from Hurricane Sandy (Seaside Heights, NJ) is piled up behind an artificial dune in order to protect island infrastructure from the subsequent winter storm season. Like storms, humans change coasts too.

USGS Graduate Research Assistant Legna Torres-Garcia installs a temperature logger on a coral reef in Dry Tortugas National Park. She and her team deployed a vertical array with temperature loggers every 1m from the seabed to near-surface with the goal to capture any changes in temperature through time and across depth.

USGS hydrologist Kaitlyn Colella and a Shinnecock Nation member work together gathering oyster and bed sediment samples along Long Island, New York, coast.

Hurricane Sandy struck the New Jersey shore October 29–31, 2012. Houses, cars, and a street in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, were covered in beach sand after the hurricane's storm tide receded

Photo of Sunset Beach, Florida, during tropical storm Colin in June 2016. The storm resulted in large waves and elevated water levels that caused erosion in this area, as can be seen in the scarp forming at the vegetation line. CMHRP researchers surveyed the elevation of the beach before and after the storm to quantify the storm's impacts.

A close-up of the Paramuricea polyps when open.

Large Lophelia colonies and numerous anemones at a depth of about 1,500 feet in Mississippi Canyon. Red laser beams, projected from a remotely operated vehicle, represent a separation of 10 centimeters (about 4 inches). A western roughy is seen to the left of the structure.

Aerial images of the wilderness breach: a) Aerial photograph taken several days after Hurricane Sandy (photo credit: NOAA); b) Aerial mosaic of the breach in June 2015 showing the location of erosion on the ocean side of the breach and deposition that results in the seasonal formation of a spit.

A massive colony of Paragorgia (bubble gum coral) with a squat lobster hiding among the polyps.

Black tape is stretched across the stopper of the 'Niskin' bottle and secured to form a positive pressure seal.

Paragorgia arborea, commonly known as "bubblegum coral" for its pink color and large polyps.