HRI PhD student Anthony Reisinger accepts his first place award from Dr. Ann Williams for the film on hypoxia in the Gulf that he created during a summer internship with NOAA.
Reisinger awarded for Dead Zone film
Anthony Reisinger, a new PhD student at HRI, was recently awarded first place in the Student Short Science Film Competition on Water for his film The Dead Zone at the 2008 Sigma Xi Annual Meeting on November 23 in Washington, D.C.. Anthony’s film addresses the seasonal hypoxia that occurs near the outflows of the Mississippi River in the Gulf of Mexico. He created it during his summer internship as a NOAA Ernest F. Hollings Scholar at the NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory in Silver Spring, Maryland. Reisinger has an A.A.S. in Digital Imaging from Texas State Technical College and a B.S. in Environmental Sciences from the University of Texas at Brownsville. He is working with Dr. Jim Gibeaut in HRI's Coastal and Marine Geospatial Laboratory pursing his PhD in Coastal Marine Systems Science.

Etnoyer discovers new species of coral
A new species of Isidella “bamboo” coral from North Pacific seamounts that grows on the ocean floor 1,000 meters deep will be published by HRI PhD student Peter Etnoyer in the upcoming Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. Etnoyer discovered the new coral species during Gulf of Alaska Seamount Expeditions he made with Dr. Tom Shirley in 2002 and 2004, using the Alvin submersible. Isidella was one of the largest (larger than 1 meter) and most conspicuous gorgonians on a dozen different seamount peaks. A paratype is on display in the new Sant Ocean Hall at Smithsonian Institution in Washington, “but it looks best alive through the porthole of Alvin,” said Etnoyer.