On May 20, 2025, a group of 8 students from SailFuture High School came to tour the Weatherbird and decorate styrofoam heads at FIO's student center.
The expedition boat, R/V Weatherbird II (pictured below) is housed at the USF marina and is maintained and operated by FIO. Pictured above is FIO's new ROV Taurus which has eight 4K cameras that are live-streamed to shore so that scientists and citizens can conduct research or simply enjoy the depths of the Gulf in real time.
Julie Richey and Caitlin Reynolds are relying on our retrieval of a sediment trap and CTD (Conductivity-Temperature-Depth) samples for their longitudinal study on organisms in the water column.