The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Office of the Provost has formally initiated the search for the next dean of the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). The search advisory committee reporting to Provost Michael Bruno has been established to start the search process.
SOEST is widely recognized as a world-class research and academic institution. It is ranked in the top 1% globally for atmospheric science, earth science and oceanography. The mission of SOEST is to serve society through uplifting and expanding new knowledge about our oceans, Earth, atmosphere and planets, and enhancing the quality of life in Hawaiʻi, the nation and across the globe, by providing world-class research and education, contributing to a high-tech economy, and promoting the sustainable and resilient use of the environment.
Denise Konan, dean of the College of Social Sciences, will chair the search advisory committee, whose members are as follows:
Rosie Alegado, associate professor, Department of Oceanography and UH Sea Grant, Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education, SOEST
Alex Culley, associate researcher, Pacific Biosciences Research Center, SOEST
Jenny Engels, ADVANCE grant co-principal investigator, community member
Jennifer Griswold, associate professor and chair, Department of Atmospheric Sciences, SOEST
Amir Haroon, assistant professor, Hawaiʻi Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, SOEST
Anita Lopez, director of Research Vessel Operations, RCUH member
Teresa Medeiros, fiscal manager, UH staff
Gregory Moore, emeritus professor, Department of Earth Sciences, SOEST
Yuta Norden, graduate student
Robert Toonen, professor and Gates Endowed chair, Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology, SOEST
The committee will recommend finalists to Provost Bruno, who will then recommend a selectee to the UH president.
The search process has started and will lead into the spring 2025 semester with finalists invited to campus in spring and anticipated start date for the new dean in fall 2025.
Malte Stuecker, associate professor in SOEST, won the James B. Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union (AGU) for his significant contributions to Earth and space science. As part of the award, he will also become an AGU Fellow.
AGU, the world’s largest Earth and space science association, celebrates individuals and teams through its annual Honors and Recognition program for their accomplishments in research, education, science communication, and outreach. The AGU announcement highlights that “these honorees have transformed our understanding of the world, impacted our everyday lives, improved our communities and contributed to solutions for a sustainable future.”
Stuecker’s research is on the dynamics, predictability, and impacts of climate variability and projected climate change, with an emphasis on the Indo-Pacific region.
“I am very grateful to receive this recognition. I am thankful for my mentors, postdocs, students, and colleagues who make up a research community that is exciting, challenging, and fun,” said Stuecker, who is dually appointed in the Department of Oceanography and the International Pacific Research Center in the SOEST. “It is a privilege to conduct research that I am passionate about and to be part of this community.”
Stuecker received degrees from the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg in Germany as well as from UH Mānoa. Prior to his current appointment in SOEST, he was an assistant project leader at the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) in South Korea and a NOAA Climate & Global Change postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Stuecker joins a distinguished group of scientists, leaders and communicators recognized by AGU for advancing science. Each honoree reflects AGU’s vision for a thriving, sustainable and equitable future supported by scientific discovery, innovation and action.
Honorees will be recognized at AGU24, which will convene more than 25,000 attendees from over 100 countries in Washington, D.C. and online everywhere on 9-13 December 2024. Reflecting the theme ‘What’s Next for Science’ at AGU24, the Honors Reception will recognize groundbreaking achievements that illustrate science’s continual advancement, inspiring the AGU community with their stories and successes.
When asked where she is from, Malia Martin shared, “I’m born, raised, and rooted in the mokupuni of Oʻahu, specifically in the Ewa moku and the ahupuaʻa of Honouliuli.” As an undergraduate student in the Global Environmental Science (GES) program at the University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa, Martin is merging her love and respect for place, care for community, and passion for science.
“I decided to pursue GES because it allows me to expand my interests, in not only biology or engineering or physics, but to feel the freedom to try new things and see where my interests lie,” Martin said. “Through the program, I have been able to study plankton, bottomfish fisheries, engineering, coral ecology, and ocean chemistry.”
While she was a student at James Campbell High School, Martin was president of the school’s STEM Enrichment Club, which competed in Science Olympiad, Science Bowl, and Aloha Bowl. Immediately after high school, she interned with Kupu in their Hawaiʻi Youth Conservation Corps and found her first love: ʻāina.
Diving into fisheries science
After starting her college career at Leeward Community College and being drawn to oceanography, Martin worked with professor Donn Viviani and spent nearly three years sorting, counting, and identifying fish larvae sampled from Kanēʻohe Bay. In Viviani’s lab, she connected with NOAA researcher Don Kobayashi, who introduced her to NOAA’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center Young Scientist Opportunity (PYSO) and NOAA’s Hōkūala Kīkaha Kai Internship Opportunity, both of which she successfully applied for.
During the PYSO internship in the summer of 2022, Martin created an artificial light prototype to aid deep sea underwater camera surveys. This was developed to directly help with the Bottomfish Fishery-Independent Survey in Hawaiʻi (BFISH).
“Through this program, I was able to gain experience in marine engineering by learning and utilizing Computer-Aided Design, 3D printing, soldering, and more,” Martin said.
In 2023, Martin transferred from Leeward CC to the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology and enrolled in the GES program. For her GES undergraduate research thesis, Martin extended her PYSO project and is mentored by UH Mānoa oceanographer Jeffrey Drazen and NOAA senior marine scientist Benjamin Richards. Martin’s research is investigating how the artificial lights might affect the behavior of the Deep 7 Bottomfish, the seven most culturally important and highly valued of the deep-water bottomfish species in Hawaiʻi. She will be presenting preliminary results of this work at the American Fisheries Society meeting this week.
“The bottomfish fishery is the second largest commercial fishery in the islands and the BFISH promotes sustainable harvesting of these species,” Martin said. “Guaranteeing that the Deep 7 Bottomfish can be fished for years to come without them being overexploited will allow Hawaiʻi residents to catch their own fish and create stronger food security for islanders, a step toward Kanaka autonomy.”
Supporting representation in the sciences
This past spring, Martin was selected to participate in the Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) Program through the UH Mānoa John A. Burns School of Medicine, which aims to provide training in biological research for a diverse group of UH Mānoa students who are underrepresented in the sciences.
“I really like how much progress I’ve been able to make on my research with the MARC Program’s guidance,” Martin shared. “Participating in the required research courses and hearing about my cohorts’ research has really helped me see the bigger picture of research as a whole and not just in the spotlight of conservation. I’m also finding ways to improve my communication of science through their example. As a Native Hawaiian, I really appreciate the work being done through MARC to create opportunities in academia for marginalized communities.”
Martin will be graduating in spring 2026. After which she hopes to become an employee at the NOAA Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center and later pursue a doctoral degree.
Important Dates: September 17: Deadline to drop a course with a “W” grade Last day for 50% tuition refund September 25: Last day to apply for Fall 2024 Graduation Interested in SOEST Club?
The ocean plays an important role in the global carbon cycle by absorbing about one-quarter of the carbon emitted by human activities every year. A study published recently in Nature Geoscience and co-authored by a University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa oceanographer revealed about 6% of the total uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) by the ocean is due to rainfall.
“The impact of rain on air-sea CO₂ fluxes hasn’t been systematically examined, but understanding it gives us a more complete picture,” said David Ho, study co-author and oceanography professor in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology. “This is especially important since rainfall patterns over the ocean are expected to shift with climate change, and that could impact the ocean carbon sink.”
Exchanges between the ocean and the atmosphere are governed by various chemical, physical, and biological properties and processes. Rainfall alters these properties of the ocean surface, and thus promotes the exchange of CO2 at the air-sea interface.
Rain impacts this carbon exchange in three different ways. First, as it falls on the ocean surface, it generates turbulence that facilitates the renewal of water in contact with the atmosphere. Secondly, it dilutes the seawater at the surface, altering the chemical equilibrium within the oceanic carbon cycle and enabling seawater to absorb greater quantities of CO2. Finally, raindrops directly inject CO2 absorbed during their fall into the ocean through wet deposition.
The new study, led by Laetitia Parc, a doctoral student at Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS; France), is the first to provide a global estimate of these three effects of rain. The research team relied on an analysis of satellite observations and reanalysis of global climate and weather data over an 11-year period from 2008 to 2018.
Their investigation showed that rain increases the oceanic carbon sink by 140 to 190 million tonnes of carbon per year. This represents an increase of 5 to 7% in the 2.66 billion tonnes of carbon absorbed annually by the oceans. The increase in surface exchanges due to turbulence and seawater dilution plays a role of comparable order of magnitude to the direct injection of dissolved carbon in raindrops.
However, the regions where these processes are significant differ. Turbulence and dilution primarily increase the CO2 sink in tropical regions characterized by heavy rainfall events associated with weak winds, which induces noticeable salinity and CO2 dilution. In contrast, the deposition by raindrops is significant in all regions with heavy precipitation: the tropics, of course, but also the storm tracks and the Southern Ocean.
The results of this study suggest that the effect of rain should be explicitly included in the estimates used to construct the global carbon budget, which is compiled annually and integrates anthropogenic emissions, the growth of atmospheric CO2, and natural carbon sinks.
The University of Hawaiʻi (UH) has reached a milestone in the U.S. Department of Defense funded project that aims to create a living breakwater system to protect coastlines from erosion and create ecosystems where resilient corals and other ocean life can grow and thrive.
The project, spearheaded by the Applied Research Laboratory at UH (ARL at UH) in partnership with UH Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), has completed the first concrete reef structure, and full production is now underway for 60 units. The project is on track for its first deployment of a 50-meter array of structures near the Ulupaʻu crater, off the Kailua Bay side of Marine Corps Base Hawaiʻi in late 2024, early 2025.
Concrete reef prototypes.
The Rapid Resilient Reefs for Coastal Defense (R3D) is a $27 million, five-year project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and is in partnership with University of California San Diego/Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Florida Atlantic University, Ohio State University and industry partner Makai Ocean Engineering located in Hawaiʻi.
“This project aims to redesign how we do coastal protection,” said Ben Jones, R3D principal investigator and ARL at UH Director of Ocean Science and Technology. “We’re looking at how to engineer a living breakwater system to protect coastlines and that will incorporate living coral. So we’ve engineered a coral reef that is inspired by natural fringing reefs.”
Concrete reef prototypes
The two concrete reef prototypes, cast at Campbell Industrial Park, feature large holes to dissipate wave energy and are specifically designed to promote coral growth:
The Reef Crest structure (20 ft long x 8 ft wide x 7.7 ft high, 11.7 U.S. tons) will bear the brunt of the larger waves and will be anchored to the seabed to prevent it from moving during larger-wave events.
The Back Reef Structures (13.6 ft diameter x 5.2 ft tall x 4.4 US tons) will rest in calmer environments.
Concrete reef prototypes with coral settlement module.
The structures will sit just below the water’s surface and leverage the natural shape of the seafloor to preserve the areas’ natural aesthetics.
“This is a really great project, a truly interdisciplinary project,” said Zhenhua Huang, SOEST Ocean and Resources Engineering professor. “I am a coastal engineer and through this project I am working with marine biologists, which is a totally different field. So, we work together to achieve this common goal, which is to come up with a solution that is nature based.”
Adaptive biology, nature-based solutions
Setting up coral settlement modules
One Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) team has been breeding more resilient corals that are better at adjusting to warming oceans caused by climate change.
“The adaptive biology part of it is focused on how we get corals onto the structure that are going to survive marine heat waves and future climate change,” said Robert Toonen, HIMB research professor. “This project builds on over a decade of research at HIMB.”
A second HIMB team worked on the design and fabrication of coral settlement modules, complex habitat shapes, that will be placed on the concrete reef base structures. These structures will naturally recruit coral larvae. Additionally, thermally tolerant corals will be attached to some of the modules, which are designed to mimic natural coral reefs.
“We put out these structures with special crevices, cracks and crannies that we’ve noticed through multiple generations of design that coral babies love,” said Joshua Madin, HIMB research professor. “We kind of reverse engineered the reef to find out what they love about the reef and then we reproduced those using 3D printing and concrete casting methods and tested them.”
Project’s next phase
After the team deploys the structures off of Marine Corps Base Hawaiʻi, the site will be monitored. Researchers say they will be able to measure the reduction in wave energy immediately, but it will take a few years to measure the success of the growth of the resilient corals and ecosystem.
“One of the most valuable aspects of this project is that we are taking all of the lessons that we are learning and developing a robust template for how to implement this work elsewhere,” said Joshua Levy, the project’s technical program manager. “This includes customizing surveying techniques and technology designs that best mimic the area’s physical environment and natural genetic diversity.”
The R3D team is also exploring potential applications at other vulnerable coastlines on Oʻahu such as Puʻuloa Range Training Facility in ʻEwa, and the Kaʻaʻawa coast.
Research that matters
Design and fabrication of coral settlement modules.
R3D is one of many research projects at UH, which set a record in extramural funding awarded, with $615.7 million in fiscal year 2024. Extramural funding is investments from external agencies such as the federal government that support research conducted by university faculty and staff.
“This groundbreaking project is a prime example of how our world-class research is making a real impact in our communities,” said UH Vice President for Research and Innovation Vassilis L. Syrmos. “Addressing coastal erosion and creating more resilient coral reefs is research that matters to all of us here in Hawaʻi and to many around the world.”
