Georgia Sea Grant funds over half a million dollars of coastal research every two years.
Georgia Sea Grant funds research projects on two-year cycles, sponsoring projects that investigate or better understand coastal ecosystems, policy making and marine industries. Georgia Sea Grant research projects are shared with coastal communities and stakeholders, facilitating sustainable economic development and land use practices, healthy coastal ecosystems, safe and sustainable seafood and coastal hazard mitigation.
2024 – 2026 Projects
Neonicotinoid presence in coastal waters and potential impacts on the Eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica
Principal Investigator: Risa Cohen, Georgia Southern University
- Neonicotinoid pesticides were introduced in the mid 1990’s and are now one of the most utilized classes of insecticides worldwide. Despite their intense use and ability to contaminate surface waters, this class of pesticides is rarely part of routine monitoring efforts due to their perceived benign effects on nontarget organisms. However, neonicotinoids appear to contribute to honeybee colony collapse disorder, warranting further investigation on other nontarget insects and freshwater and marine invertebrates. Bivalves may be at particular risk of adverse effects from neonicotinoid pesticides because they filter large volumes of water while feeding and reside at the sediment water interface where these pesticides may accumulate. Dramatic declines in the Eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, are occurring along the US Atlantic and Gulf coastlines from overharvest and disease, among other factors. This is especially problematic because in addition to being a commercially valuable species, reefs built by eastern oysters provide a variety of ecosystem services, including the formation of complex habitats utilized by numerous marine species, improved water quality through their filtration and associated processes, shoreline stabilization via dampening of flow and reducing sediment resuspension, and aesthetic value. This project will investigate linkages between imidacloprid exposure, the most used neonicotinoid globally, and effects on the Eastern oyster.
Exploring the potential for aquaculture product diversification with macroalgae
Principal Investigator: John Carroll, Georgia Southern University
- Oyster aquaculture is a rapidly expanding industry, although the industry is lagging behind in Georgia. Expansion and long-term success of Georgia’s nascent oyster aquaculture industry is dependent on establishing practices that maximize product yield in a sustainable manner while also diversifying farmed products. One potential practice could be co-production of oysters with seaweeds that would remove excess nutrients, buffer water pH, and some inhibit the growth of harmful algae. Farms using this practice may experience increased oyster production while also gaining a second marketable product, seaweed, which had a global production value of $14.7 billion in 2019. Thus, the main goal of this project is to determine the feasibility of seaweed aquaculture in Georgia and whether local seaweed, specifically Ulva species, can be produced in polyculture with oysters to improve water quality and enhance oyster yield.
A Sanctuary in Sound: Increasing Accessibility to Gray’s Reef Data through Auditory Displays
Principal Investigator: Jessica Roberts, Georgia Tech
- Public presentations of complex scientific data are often represented visually in graphs and charts that are inaccessible to learners who are blind or visually impaired (BVI) or have print related disabilities such as learning disabilities, low visual or text literacy skills, or innumeracy. This project seeks to increase the accessibility of Sea Grant and National Marine Sanctuary outreach efforts to the visually impaired and others unable to make sense of visual graphs. Because connection to local issues is known to be important to sensemaking in human-data interactions, the project will use publicly available data from the Gray’s Reef National Marine to create auditory displays representing local and regional phenomena in order to understand: (1) how to design auditory displays to facilitate conversations about issues affecting Georgia’s coastal and marine ecosystems for both sighted and visually impaired learners in informal environments and (2) what human-data interactions with auditory displays contribute to sensemaking by sighted and visually impaired learners in informal learning interactions. The auditory displays created during this grant could be brought to many of the science centers along the Georgia coast and be made available online for residents elsewhere in Georgia and beyond, and will provide inspiration and lessons learned to others who would like to create similar materials for other locally relevant data sources.
Leveraging sediment properties to enhance blue carbon storage in beneficial use restoration projects
Principal Investigator: Amanda Spivak, University of Georgia
- Salt marshes are an important blue carbon ecosystem because sediment carbon deposits can be meters deep and thousands of years old. Iron (Fe) and aluminum (Al) are abundant minerals in the Earth’s surface and form associations with organic matter that protect against microbial decomposition and thereby contribute to long-term carbon storage. Dredging by the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has generated billons of cubic yards of material that is largely disposed of at land and sea, but there is a desire to increase the use of dredged materials for beneficial projects that will build, nourish, and protect coastal wetlands and communities from rising sea levels. Decision makers need tools to help match dredge material with beneficial use projects. A potential co-benefit of beneficial use projects is increased blue carbon storage by leveraging the properties of minerals in the dredge material that protect organic matter from microbial decomposition. The overarching goals of this proposal are to identify the characteristics of dredge sediment that can enhance marsh carbon preservation and co-develop decision support tools for sediment selection for beneficial use projects.
Assessing the economic impact of compound risks in underserved communities: A Glynn County, GA, Case Study
Principal Investigator: Susana Ferreira, University of Georgia
- Coastal Georgia is vulnerable to compound risks from coastal inundation and environmental contamination by hazardous materials. These risks are not borne evenly by its population but instead disproportionately threaten underserved communities. At a community fair in Brunswick, GA in July 2022 convened by members of the project team, flooding and water pollution were highlighted as key environmental health concerns, with most participants having experienced flooding in their neighborhoods. While local research efforts on environmental impacts are underway, an economic assessment focused on underserved communities is lacking and needed to integrate and advance local environmental and social justice efforts more effectively. Using Glynn County, GA, as a case study, this project proposes to quantify the compound risks of coastal inundation and contamination, and to estimate their economic impacts to inform community planning adaptation to climate change in the face of environmental injustice.