Students become scientists on cruise

14 from C of C to explore the unknown in real time

By Bo Petersen

The Post and Courier

Thursday, October 23, 2008

The streambed looks like a meandering Lowcountry tidal creek, its
sandswept rocks swarmed by fish. Except that it's 25 miles out to sea from
Charleston, on the ocean floor.

Brian Kennedy/Alison Deary
College of Charleston

A 3-D map of three miles of an ancient streambed found by
sonar 25 miles off Charleston in 2006.

The ancient channel is a remnant of the Ice Age shoreline of South
Carolina. Nobody knew it was there until a group of College of Charleston
students beamed sonar across it two years ago. That's the value of the sea
floor mapping cruise Leslie Sautter's marine geology class is about to
take — the reason students fend off job

offers while they complete their studies.

"If you're out on that ship, you're acting as a scientist. You're not a
student any more," said senior Josh Mode, a veteran mapper who has already
mapped Grays Reef and the Dry Tortugas among other undersea landmarks.

The work is real, part of ongoing National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration project mapping a coastal sea floor that has had only a
tiny fraction mapped so far. The students delineate potential fishing and
sanctuary sites. They help locate sea mountains, shipwrecks and other
natural or man-made formations that could cause problems for maritime
traffic.

Chris Stubbs/College of
Charleston

Marine life grows on a stretch of ancient streambed found
by sonar mapping by College of Charleston students in 2006.

ERT Inc., a NOAA contractor for the project, just hired one of the
mapping students — essentially a first step into a marine science career.

"She's already been collecting the data, has the background reviewing
it and putting it into a display that's usable," said Jonathan Shannon, of
ERT.

"I don't know any place in the country that's giving undergraduate
students this kind of training," Sautter said.

The mapping cruise is in its third year. This time, 14 students will
meet the NOAA Ship Nancy Foster in Key West, Fla., on Friday, and travel
back to Charleston to map a stretch offshore they have named "Doc's Rocks"
in honor of "Doc" Sautter. As the ship crosses back and forth, students
sweep sonar of more than 200 individual beams. Next semester they will
head to the lab to analyze the reams of data they collect.

The six-mile Doc's Rocks stretch is a ledge exposed from the sand at
the tip of the Continental Shelf, at the edge of the Gulf Stream —
literally the rim of the North American continent.

"What we're mapping is potentially an ancient shoreline from the last
Ice Age," Sautter said. "We don't know what we're going to find. The
students are really exploring new territory."

The rocks, like the riverbed, teem with marine life. The sonar images
come up in real time and students crowd the screens.

"It's always a really awesome feeling. You're always watching to see
what comes up next," Mode said. "All these theories are bouncing off
everybody — it's a mystery and you try to figure out why it's there."

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