HARBOR BRANCH - OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE

REDUCING IMPACTS OF HURRICANES AND OTHER NATURAL DISASTERS THROUGH ADVANCED COMMUNICATIONS AND OCEAN MONITORING

FT. PIERCE -- On Wednesday, Jan. 25, at 4:00 and 7:00 p.m., for the next event in the 2006 Harbor Branch Ocean Science Lecture Series, the speaker will be Dr. Andrew Clark, president of Harris Corporation's Maritime Communications subsidiary. He will discuss a national effort to establish the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS), similar to the National Weather Service, as well as his experiences while establishing satellite communications stations in Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

IOOS will gather information from land-, air-, water- and space-based sensors to meet a variety of critical national needs. These include detecting and forecasting oceanic components of climate variability; increasing the safety of ship operations; ensuring national security; managing resources for sustainable use; natural hazard mitigation; and ensuring public health. A Presidentially-appointed Ocean Commission has predicted it will cost an initial half billion dollars to complete IOOS, and an additional half billion dollars per year to operate and maintain it.

A federal interagency office called Ocean.US was established by Congress to oversee this IOOS effort and is staffed by experts from 15 Executive Branch agencies and some of the nation's top universities and oceanographic institutions. Clark, former Harbor Branch Engineering Director, was recruited temporarily through Ocean.US to facilitate participation by the U.S. industrial sector in this monumental endeavor.

Clark will be describing the components of the IOOS and the system's importance, including how it will reduce the impacts of such natural disasters as hurricanes, tsunamis and coastal inundation. He will also explain the local significance of the system and the roles that Harris and Harbor Branch may play in establishing it. One key IOOS component will be Harris Corporation's OceanNET oceanographic observing systems, which were built at Harbor Branch. The OceanNET buoys are being deployed around the world at sites such as the Mediterranean Sea. They comprise a variety of ocean sensors and transmit data critical to tsnunami tracking and other needs via satellite.

Clark's second, related topic will be his work in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In addition to buoy and ship communication systems, the Harris company that Clark heads up also deploys satellite communications systems on land in areas where, like the sea, no infrastructure exists, including those ravaged by war or other manmade or natural disaster. As Katrina barreled toward the Gulf Coast, Clark and his employees reconfigured 15 such systems bound for Africa, loaded them into rented trucks and drove them to Katrina's ground zero to establish communications for those working or stranded in the area. Clark will be sharing photos, videos and first-hand accounts of the team's experiences in re-establishing vital lifelines in the days immediately following the hurricane.

The importance of Clark and Harris's post-Katrina communications efforts has been widely acknowledged. Clark is now working at the state and national level to establish and execute plans both to "harden" existing communications infrastructure in vulnerable areas and to build mobile and rapidly deployed emergency communications networks for use in areas hardest hit by storms. As Clark will explain, Governor Bush recently outlined a new $565 million plan for increasing Florida's storm readiness that will include work toward these goals.

Dr. Andrew Clark is president and founder of Harris Corporation Maritime Communication Services. He is currently on loan to Ocean.US serving as Industry Liaison. His maritime career spans more than thirty years, beginning in the Gulf of Mexico's offshore oil and gas industry. Through most of the 1980's and '90s, he worked at Harbor Branch where he was Director of Engineering. This year, he was reappointed for a third term by the U.S. Secretary of the Navy to serve on the nation's Ocean Research Advisory Panel. Clark is past president and Fellow of the Marine Technology Society, a licensed Professional Engineer, and holds a Ph.D. in Ocean Engineering from the University of Hawaii. He is a trustee on the boards of both the Florida Institute of Technology and the Link Foundation and is a senior member of the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society. He also serves on the National Advisory Board for the Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence, the Board of Directors of the Florida Ocean Alliance, and the Technical Advisory Board of Florida's Center of Excellence in Biomedical and Marine Biotechnology. Clark was the 2003 recipient of the Lockheed-Martin Award for Ocean Science and Technology. He holds both U.S. and International Patents for the development of underwater technology and has authored more than fifty technical publications, book chapters and magazine articles. He has also been involved in the production of numerous underwater documentaries aired by National Georgraphic, BBC Oxford Scientific Films and Disney.

Clark's talk, "Ocean Observing Systems for Natural Hazard Prediction and Mitigation - with a First-hand Look at Post Hurricane Katrina Recovery/Relief Efforts," will be held in the auditorium of the Johnson Education Center on the Harbor Branch Campus, 5600 US 1 North, Ft. Pierce, Fla. at 4:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 25. High-res photos are available to the media upon request. Please direct press inquiries to Mark Schrope at 772-216-0390 or schrope@hboi.edu. General questions about the series should be directed to the Marine Education Office at 772-465-2400 ext. 506 or education@hboi.edu. All talks in the Ocean Science Lecture Series are free to the public and followed by a meet-the-speaker reception.

2006 HARBOR BRANCH OCEAN SCIENCE LECTURE SERIES SCHEDULE

February 1 - Ned Smith - The Forbidden Zone and the Treasure Coast: Contrasting Florida's Gulf and Atlantic Coasts

February 8 - Brian Lapointe - Paradise Lost, Paradigm Found: Long Term Monitoring of Water Quality and Coral Reef Communities in the Florida Keys

February 15 - Clay Cook - Coral Bleaching and Global Warming: The Verdict Is In

February 22 - Amy Wright - Natural Products Investigators: Finding and Understanding A Killer

March 1 - Greg Bossart - The Indian River Lagoon Health Assessment Program from 2003-2005: So What's Ailing Flipper?

March 8 - John Scarpa - The Sensible Sea Squirt

March 15 - Tammy Frank - Vision in the Deep Sea: A Crab's Eye View

March 22 - Tracey Sutton - Deep-sea Denizens of the Mid Atlantic Ridge

March 29 - Peter McCarthy - An Ocean of Microbes: Microbial Influences on Planetary and Human Health

HARBOR BRANCH Oceanographic Institution was founded in Ft. Pierce, Fla., in 1971 to support the exploration and conservation of the world's oceans. The institution has held to this mission and grown into one of the world's leading oceanographic institutions with a 500-acre campus, over 200 personnel, and a fleet of sophisticated research ships and submersibles.