Award Data

In 2017 the CDC estimated 35,000 American got sick from Vibrio parahaemolyticus transmitted by shellfish--a 54% increase. However, according to the co-chair of the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Commission, “Our current system of traceback is inadequate.... Records are lost. Handwriting is illegible. More than half of all traceback investigations fail because the information in the value chain ...

"Chronic malnourishment globally affects more than 800 million people with an expected population growth of another 2 billion over the next 30 years. Today, aquaculture accounts for nearly 50 percent of the world’s food fish and is one of the fastest growing food-producing sectors. The biggest threat to global aquaculture production is infectious disease. While marine diseases are a naturally oc ...

Coral transplantation is a primary management option for rehabilitation of degraded reefs. Stabilization (via adhesion, etc.) of transplants on existing reef or artificial substrates notably improves their survival rate. Improved underwater adhesives are needed for expedient and convenient stabilization of coral transplants with improved survival rate. A new hybrid organic-inorganic adhesive is pr ...

Texas Research Institute Austin (TRI Austin) will develop a fast acting, strong, tough, adhesive that will bond underwater without extensive surface preparations. TRI Austin will formulate the adhesive to optimize setup time, establish charge weight for the adhesive to reduce adhesive underwater preparation time, and develop the procedures for using the adhesive to bond coral to reef substrates. A ...

We propose an innovative yet straightforward approach to developing and delivering a readily deployable product to support combating IUU. We combine newly available low-cost hyperspectral sensors with state-of-the-art deep learning-based real-time data processing and deploy it on high-availability commodity cloud computing hardware - our solution is compatible with both existing systems as well as ...

Ciguatera fish poisoning is an illness suffered by > 50,000 people yearly after consumption of fish containing ciguatoxins (CTXs) or exposure to a harmful algae bloom (HAB). Manufacturing of critical reagents to develop assays to detect ciguatoxin have been elusive due to the constraints in production of viable amounts of the toxin. Thankfully, a significant amount of work has been done to demonst ...

Nanohmics, Inc. proposes to develop the most sensitive antibody and/or DNA aptamer‐quantum dot (Qdot)‐based lateral flow (LF) test strips possible for detection of harmful algal bloom (HAB) toxins in fresh or saltwater and seafood rinsates. Although commercial colloidal gold‐LF test strips for some HABs and anti‐HAB toxin aptamer DNA sequences already exist, Nanohmics’ innovation of inco ...

Species substitution with a product of lesser value has become an increasing problem within the seafood industry. Increased international trade, rising consumption rates, and high profit incentives have all contributed to the intentional mislabeling of seafood. While whole, unprocessed fish can generally be identified by their morphological features, processing of seafood makes identification chal ...

Producers of imagery intelligence must contend with the distortions and defects in available images. One approach to recovering some the lost spatiotemporal video content during single frame analysis is to use processing techniques that improve spatial quality and resolution of individual frames by exploiting inter-frame correlations. However, the assumptions, enhancement capabilities, and computa ...

To address NGA’s requirements, Sonalysts’ team of world-class experts in underwater optical communication proposes development and implementation of the Precision Optical Navigation Transceiver for Undersea Systems (PONTUS). PONTUS will transfer navigation information from an Underwater Navigation Beacon (UNB) to an Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (UUV) in an electromagnetic-spectrum-denied (e.g., G ...