A team of researchers from Georgia Tech and GT Savannah have been awarded funds from the National Science Foundation to upgrade School of Biology's Marine Facility on Skidaway Island. Led by Biology faculty Marc Weissburg, the funds will be used to build a state of the art flow facility that will allow for a variety of investigations of flow-related behavior of marine animals, as well as engineering studies on locally important issues such as coastal erosion and turbulent sediment.

The facility will be modeled after a similar state-of-the-art flow tank at Georgia Tech, and will consist of a 12 m x 1 m channel fed with a high volume pump that can move water through the channel at velocities of up to 1 m s-1. The large range of precisely controllable flow conditions and easy access to both animals and seawater makes this a unique facility for both engineers and biologists. The facility helps to further unite engineering and biology faculty at Georgia Tech’s main campus with faculty at GT Savannah and nearby institutions as Savannah State and the Skidaway. The facility will be available as a regional resource for students at all educational levels and researchers in the local community, and affirms Tech's commitment to education, community outreach, and societal benefit. The facility will be designed and managed by Weissburg, as well as co-investigators Don Webster (GT Civil and Environmental Engineering) and Hermann Fritz (GT Savannah).

The proposed facility will enable studies on chemical communication, by examining how turbulent chemical plumes (see picture) are transported, and will enable investigations of turbulent sediment transport and behavior of animals in flow.