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Over the last year and half or so Sarah Murphy has worked with our group on many, many projects. Always with a smile and a can-do attitude, she has filled in on instrument prep- and break-down, wave flume activities, a TEAL-SHIPS cruise, and model-data analysis. Leaning into her specialty, she took the lead on our satellite processing for cruises and creating long-term climatologies as well as organizing CTD codes for cruise reports and to share with collaborators. I very much appreciated working with you, Sarah – hope to see you around CMS again one of these days!

The 2026 AGU Annual Meeting is 7–11 December 2026 in San Francisco. I am co-convening a coastal oceanography session with Dr. Alexander Kurapov and Dr. Jianping Gan.

Consider submitting an abstract to OS016: Coastal Ocean and Shelf Sea Dynamics!

Coastal ocean processes mediate the exchange of momentum, buoyancy, and tracers between the land-sea interface and the open ocean. Processes including wind-driven upwelling and downwelling, boundary current interactions, shelf-slope exchanges, coastal current instabilities, tides and internal waves, river plumes, and boundary layer dynamics occur over a wide spectrum of scales where variable bathymetry and coastline properties can have a critical impact. This session invites contributions that advance process-based understanding of coastal dynamics as well as their effects on sediment transport, biogeochemical cycling and coupled atmosphere-ice-ocean processes. We encourage physical, biogeochemical oceanographic and interdisciplinary studies that leverage novel observational approaches, advances in numerical modeling as well as analytical contributions that provide insight into the governing dynamics throughout worldwide coastal oceans and shelf seas.

The abstract submission deadline is August 5.

Former UNCW post-doctoral researcher, Cesar Acevedo Ramirez, has his paper on rocky shoreline wave modeling published today in Journal of Marine Science Engineering! In celebration, a couple pictures with Cesar during his time at UNCW.

What a fun Ocean Sciences Meeting in Glasgow! In many ways, there were familiar sights for an Ocean Sciences (informative talks and posters, wonderful to see so much excitement around ocean science, reconnections with old friends and coming up with new ideas), but this time with a distinctly Scottish flavor. Half of UNCW ocean scientists are apparently from Physics and Physical Oceanography, who knew?! Also, as convenient as it was to have multiple sessions simultaneously in the same room, I am not sure if I can get behind the “silent disco” effect in the science context.

Bingchen Liu has published his work, “Scaling Breaking-Wave Vorticity Generation in the Surfzone” in JPO. This paper brings me BACK. In 2014, we ran hundreds of these funwaveC wave-resolving surfzone simulations. I used the results to see how wave directional spread controlled bulk estimates of offshore transport due to rip currents. The model outputs also came in handy here and there for several years, but have “stayed on the shelf” until recently. Bingchen deserves a huge congratulations and thank you for bringing these results back in style. His analysis here brings us one step closer to incorporating wave-resolved vorticity forcing into the wave-averaged modeling world.

Arfin Sudirman and I were classmates in both middle- and high-school. He is now a Professor of International Relations, studying Maritime Law at Padjadjaran University (UNPAD) in my hometown of Bandung, Indonesia. I was beyond thrilled to see Prof. Arfin again and honored to be invited to discuss our work at UNCW with the UNPAD Fisheries and Ocean Sciences faculty and Dean. As they expand research into coastal sciences, I hope to have further opportunities for collaboration.

A HUGE thanks to all our new and returning sailors for TEAL-SHIPS4! We made it out and back, and sampled all of our stations nestled between two storms. among other things, we went fishing for PAR!

Also, a fascinating surface picture from our 3 days at sea, as near-winter time cold coastal conditions sat next to our tropical offshore neighbor. Here, the coherent, strong eddies from TS 2 and 3 are replaced with a dynamic frontal soup out there. It will be interesting to tease these apart from our mid-depth profiles. Bottles are dry and resting for the next one! Latest updates found here.

What fun this week to see a rocky shores experiment in the UNCW wave flume. With help from our students and volunteers, we have tried to recreate a scaled version of a rocky shoreline in the wave flume. Preserving a/h and kh is not easy, so we will see what we can reproduce in wave friction and how we might incorporate these results into future wave models.

What an eventful surfzone experiment out on Bald Head Island! As part of the Frying Pan Shoals study, we sample the nearfield with an array of pressure sensors and ADCPs. For this round, our beach RTK work was also done in conjunction with the jet ski survey group of Katherine Anarde at NCSU. As always, we had some excellent student participation and thank you very much to our hosts at the Bald Head Island Conservancy.

Bald Head Island is a remarkable spot on the coast: Within ~500 m, one side fires up while the other is flat calm. We also have both sunrises and sunsets over the ocean daily. The shifting orientation of the base of Frying Pan Shoals is fascinating. Courtesy of Google’s image archive, here is our sampling on a basemap (the shoals looked like the left, but the waves looked like the right):

This was the final recovery of our lander + Spotter wave array deployed around Frying Pan Shoals. We got a great day from the weather gods and terrific assistance as always from our CMS operations staff and student volunteers. Some excellent stories to come based on these last two years of our sampling periods around the Shoals, but first pictures from this last day on the water: