Coastal Commission Pushback

To say that the California Coastal Commission has been in something of an upheaval in recent months is an understatement.  The insanity even rubbed off on me and one of the boards I serve on (but that is a story for later).  The ouster of the Commission’s Executive Director in closed-doored session and with barely… Read more »

FAA Lets Students Fly!

May the 4th Be With Us Apparently the FAA is populated by Star Wars fans as they took this unofficial Star Wars Day to give a huge nod of support to students learning to loose their earthly gravitational bonds. The announcement at the AVUSI conference in New Orleans was made with typical FAA understatement.  Most in […]

Drone Fishing

  As someone who often does way too much and who has his hands in way too many pies at any one time, I am used to doing one project today and then a totally separate endeavor the next.  But with an increasingly disturbing regularity, my “separate” worlds appear to be merging.  Case in point […]

sUSB Expo 2016

This week I had the pleasure of attending my first Small Unmanned Systems Business Exposition in San Francisco’s Presidio.  This annual confab of the drone industry is hosted by sUAS News and the brainchild of its head honcho Patrick Egan.  I am usually not a big fan of industry meetings and wasn’t entirely sure what […]

CSU COAST 2016 Annual Meeting

Our consortium for the study of the coast and ocean here in the California State University System (aka CSU COAST) just held our annual meeting in Long Beach.  While this group’s focus is the entirety of our coastal and marine environment, much of this has a direct bearing on oil spills and how we go about… Read more »

Refugio Spill Public Lecture

A few weeks ago saw me up in Simi Valley speaking to folks from young to old about what began last May 19 at Refugio Beach.  I always enjoy giving one of our monthly installment of the CSU Channel Islands Library Lecture Series, an array of public lectures held across Ventura County open to all comers.  This presentation had… Read more »

Fun in the Sun – Discovery and Education with Underwater Robots

It all began with a box filled with PVC pipe, some dedicated AARR students from our B-WET-funded Crossing the Channel Mentoring Program at CSUCI and the very curious students of Robert J. Frank Intermediate School who participate in Ms. Meza’s Oceanography classes (4th and 7th period).  For two weeks this past month, these students learned the history of unmanned […]

Polling further solidifies CSUCI’s prominence within UAV community

Camarillo, Calif., March 14, 2016— Have you ever operated an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle?  How do you feel about law enforcement using UAVs or drones?  How about universities? Movie studios?   These are some of the questions on a public poll on UAVs—also called drones—that is currently being run by the Aerial and Aquatic Robotic Research […]

Summerland Oil…Again

For the past several days we have been seeing unusually heavy oil deposition along the beaches in Summerland, centered just below Lookout Park.  While we have been in a period of higher than normal seep activity for the past year or so, this tarring event seems beyond a mere seep event.  This smacks of some… Read more »