Morgan Gelinas (MS, 2011) studied ship wakes in the Venice Lagoon, Italy. Here, very large ships routinely navigate a deep dredged channel cut through a shallow lagoon. The wakes they create propagate over the adjacent shoals for long distances, resuspending sediment as they go. Morgan described these wakes as Bernoulli waves, or non-linear N-waves, using the same equations that govern the propagation of tsunamis over the deep-ocean basins (Gelinas, M, H. Bokuniewicz, J. Rapaglia, and K.M.M. Lwiza, 2013. Sediment Resuspension by Ship Wakes in the Venice Lagoon Journal of Coastal Research: Volume 29, Issue 1: 8-17. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-11-00213.1).
She is now a scientist specializing in marine geology and hydrodynamic processes working for EA Engineering, Science and Technology, Inc. EA has offices from Guam to Maryland and Morgan is leading many of their field efforts. Her professional duties include such a diverse array of studies such as sediment testing, ocean permitting, marine bathymetric surveys, aquatic site characterizations, interpreting ecotoxicological and bioaccumulation/tissue testing and analysis. Morgan is currently working on a site characterization study in Duluth, MN in the St. Louis River/Lake Superior area, but she has been in most of the Great Lakes in the past two summers on EPA projects. She routinely pilots the boat for bathymetric work or coring all over in the Chesapeake Bay, Gulf of Mexico and greater NYC area.