Thunder Bay 2010 Explorers
Keeley Belva
Web Coordinator
Public Affairs Specialist
NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration and Research
Keeley Belva is the Public Affairs Specialist for NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (OER) and works to tell people about the exciting things happening at OER. She is a recent transplant to the Washington, DC area, after spending the last several years in Honolulu working for NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. She holds a degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Hawai`i and appreciates the opportunity to spend time outside and on the water again!
Tane Casserley
National Maritime Heritage Coordinator/Diver
Office of National Marine Sanctuaries
Tane Casserley, the National Maritime Heritage Coordinator for NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, specializes in 19th-century warships and deep-water archaeology. Tane holds a graduate certificate in maritime archaeology from the University of Hawaii and a master's degree from the Program in Maritime Studies at East Carolina University. He has led NOAA archaeological expeditions in the Florida Keys, the Great Lakes, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Alaska, the USS Monitor, he dove with the National Park Service on a sunken B-29 in Lake Mead, and most recently served as principal investigator on an expedition to document three German U-boats from the WWII Battle of the Atlantic off the coast of North Carolina. Tane's projects have used technical diving, remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), and manned submersibles. Tane is a dive instructor and certified trimix and closed-circuit rebreather diver with the National Association of Underwater Instructors (NAUI), as well as the Nautical Archaeology Society Senior Tutor for NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.
Catherine Green Underwater Archaeologist
Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary
Catherine M. Green is an underwater archaeologist specializing in outreach and education programs with Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Cathy combines her background in nautical archaeology with her experience teaching on shipboard education programs to bring the maritime heritage resources of the sanctuary program to a wide audience. She holds a MA in Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology from East Carolina University and a BA in History and Fine Art from Indiana University. She has worked on many underwater archaeology projects from the Great Lakes to Micronesia for the past 12 years, including working for the Office of the State Underwater Archaeologist in Wisconsin for 4 years before joining the staff at Thunder Bay in 2004. She has also taught a variety of maritime subjects while sailing the East and West Coasts, the Caribbean, Hawaii and the Great Lakes, including five years with Long Island University’s SEAmester program. Cathy is also a NOAA scientific diver and Nautical Archaeology Society (NAS) Instructor. She lives in Alpena, Michigan with her husband and their three young children.
Russ Green Principal Investigator
Deputy Superintendent/Research Coordinator
Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary
Russ Green is the deputy superintendent and research coordinator at the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Alpena, Michigan. A former underwater archaeologist for the state of Wisconsin, Russ obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of Rhode Island and a graduate degree in maritime archaeology from East Carolina University. He’s worked on dozens of maritime archeology projects along much of the east coast, the Great Lakes, Bermuda and Micronesia. Trained in mixed gas and rebreather diving, Russ has led several technical diving expeditions in the Great Lakes, and worked on the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor off North Carolina. He recently led the documentation of four historic shipwrecks resting in 200 feet of water in northern Lake Huron and assisted with the documentation of World War II shipwrecks in 240 feet of water in North Carolina’s “Graveyard of the Atlantic.”
Jonathan G. Hartje Project Manager
Applied Research Laboratories
The University of Texas at Austin
Jonathan Hartje specializes in designing and implementing real-time software architectures focused on the processing of high-rate scientific data for numerous underwater vehicles. The SONAR systems built at ARL:UT are found in multiple U.S. Navy Sonar programs hosted on manned and autonomous underwater vehicles. Currently, he is leading a small team of engineers and computer programmers to design a new hardware and software architecture. This new system architecture will host all the computer programs which process SONAR data to generate images of the seafloor, autonomously detect objects on the seafloor and to control the path of the vehicle. Hartje holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.S in Software Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.
Clinton Johnson Engineering Scientist Associate
Applied Research Laboratories
The University of Texas at Austin
Clinton Johnson is an engineering scientist associate at the Applied Research Laboratories with the University of Texas at Austin (ARL:UT). He graduated from Texas A&M University with a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering in 2004. He continued his studies at Texas A&M while working on electro-magnetic suspension systems for energy storage flywheels. Through his research he completed two flights on NASA's Reduced Gravity aircraft (aka - the Vomit Comet). He joined ARL in 2006 to work on sonar system design. His work involves sonar transducer design, testing, and fabrication, as well as sonar system design, testing, and fabrication. His role also includes operating and maintaining a AUV sonar system with a sonar system developed and fabricated by ARL. His work with ARL has taken him to various places including Hawaii and Australia.
Charles Loeffler Principal Investigator
Senior Engineering Scientist
Applied Research Laboratories
The University of Texas at Austin
Charles Loeffler is a senior engineering scientist at the Applied Research Laboratories with the University of Texas at Austin (ARL:UT). He received degrees in electrical engineering and digital signal processing from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Rice University in Houston, Texas, respectively. After finishing graduate school, he taught at Colorado State University and then joined ARL in 1988. During his time at ARL, he was “on-loan” to the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and a program sponsor for sonar sensor and systems. ARL introduced him to the world of underwater acoustics, where he has developed multi-ping processing schemes to build images of the sea floor from data of various sonar systems, as well as high-speed array geometry-specific algorithms to process thousands of channels of data from these sonar systems. This research has taken him to experiments in various locations, including the lab’s tanks, ARL’s Lake Travis Test Station, a small boat in the Chesapeake Bay, on large ships in the Pacific, and in a few submarines.
Mark Story Engineering Scientist Associate
Applied Research Laboratories
The University of Texas at Austin
Mark Story is an Engineering Scientist Associate at the Applied Research Laboratories with the University of Texas at Austin (ARL:UT). He studied Electrical Engineering for a Bachelor's and a Master's degree at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and for a Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin. He worked at ARL:UT as a Research Assistant during graduate school in 2005. After deciding that he enjoyed working with sonar and living in Austin, he accepted a full time position at ARL and has continued to work with sonar systems. He likes to use signal processing and system theory to make sonar images and acoustic seafloor maps as clear as possible. He also enjoys hiking, canoeing, board games, and history.
Sarah Waters Education and Outreach Coordinator
Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary
Sarah Waters is a maritime archaeologist and the education and outreach coordinator with the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary. She holds a MA in Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology from East Carolina University and a BA in Parks and Recreation Management and Anthropology from Michigan State University. Sarah has worked on terrestrial and underwater archaeology projects throughout the United States and is a former college semester at sea program instructor. Sarah has also worked as a maritime museum curator and educator. She lives in Alpena, Michigan with her husband and two sons.
