Kathy A. Smith
January 30, 2025
PODCAST: Fascinated by Shipwrecks – Episode 7 – Guest: Ryan Miranda.
According to marine scientist and University of Delaware professor Art Trembanis, we’ve only mapped about 25 percent of the sea floor.
However, advances in underwater robotics continue to expand the depth and range of ocean exploration. In this episode, host Kathy A. Smith talks with Trembanis about his career as a coastal geologist and how that intersects with working on shipwrecks, his experiences mapping the Bikini Atoll nuclear test site, finding the SS Choctaw, and where he sees the world of autonomous robotics headed.
“We’re already starting to see increasing uses of coordinated multi-autonomous systems, coordinated swarms of systems. So, it’s not just going out with an ROV or going out with an AUV. It’s going out with drones, aerial drones, autonomous surface vessels, AUVs, ROVs, recognizing that each of those platforms has different strengths and limitations and each can be used in a different way.”
About Art Trembanis
Arthur Trembanis is the director of the Coastal Sediments, Hydrodynamics and Engineering Laboratory (CSHEL) in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment at the University of Delaware. The work of CSHEL involves the development and utilization of advanced oceanographic instrumentation, particularly autonomous underwater vehicles for seafloor mapping and benthic habitat characterization. He received a bachelor’s degree in geology from Duke University in 1998, a Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Sydney in 1999, and a Ph.D. in marine sciences from the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences in 2004. His research interests include coastal and estuarine morphodynamics, sediment transport, hydrodynamics, autonomous underwater, aerial and surface vehicles, seafloor mapping, and geoacoustics.
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