Nathan Rebuck, Ph.D.

Senior Scientist

Nathan Rebuck, Ph.D. Senior Scientist

Dr. Nathan Rebuck is an oceanographer with diverse experience in operational oceanography, the offshore wind industry, benthic and essential fish habitat, fisheries, biogeochemistry, and ocean acidification and climate change. He has helped gain regulatory approvals from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) for offshore wind projects and ensured compliance of site investigations activities conducted for Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) leaseholders, including site assessment plan and construction and operations plan surveys for renewable development. He has served as project manager, as well as lead scientist in the field, for offshore environmental surveys of benthic habitat characterization and essential fish habitat. Dr. Rebuck also has extensive experience coordinating and conducting metocean measurement surveys, hydrographic analyses, and water quality sampling in estuarine, coastal, and offshore environments.

Nathan Rebuck, Ph.D.

Senior Scientist

Offshore Wind

Essential Fish Habitat, Construction and Operations Plan, New Jersey Managed development of the essential fish habitat assessment for an offshore wind developer, including habitat evaluation and visualization. Coordinated agency discussion of potential avoidance and minimization measures to benthic resources.

Site Assessment Survey and Construction and Operations Planning, New Jersey Coordinated survey design, managed permitting, and ensured compliance during geophysical and geotechnical surveys of OCS lease areas and potential export cable routes. This included adherence to BOEM survey guidelines, as well as compliance with the Marine Mammal Protection Act and USACE nationwide permits.

Marine Site Investigation Report, New Jersey Managed development of the marine site investigation report for BOEM approval. The report included interpretation of geophysical and geotechnical data collected in accordance with BOEM guidelines and underwent several rounds of review for agency approval.

Inspection of Unexploded Ordnance and Munitions of Concern, New Jersey Managed permitting and compliance of a survey of potential munitions of concern in an OCS lease area and along the potential export cable route. Targets were identified from geophysical survey data, and high probability targets were visually inspected. Coordinated communications with U.S. Coast Guard, BOEM, and USACE for survey planning and final target identification.

Baseline Benthic Seafloor Habitat and Seafloor Characterization Assessment, Wind Energy Lease Area and Cable Routes, Continental Shelf off Rhode Island Conducted survey activities for acquiring sediment profile and plan view imaging (SPI–PV) images and collecting benthic grab samples to characterize benthic habitat along potential export cable routes and an OCS lease area. Responsible for reporting on operations, ensuring laboratory analysis, and compiling final data reports.

Baseline Benthic Seafloor Habitat and Seafloor Characterization Assessments, Wind Energy Lease Area and Cable Routes, Continental Shelf off Maine, Massachusetts, and New Jersey Managed survey activities for acquiring SPI–PV images and high-definition video of benthic habitat and collecting benthic grab samples along potential export cable routes and OCS lease areas. Responsible for reporting on operations and managing delivery of final reports to the client.

Benthic Assessment of a Potential Chemosynthetic Seep Community, Cartagena, Colombia Managed equipment delivery (import/export) and survey operations to evaluate benthic habitat for sensitive chemosynthetic seep communities near a proposed development location utilizing SPI–PV imagery. Responsible for project design, logistics, and client relations.

Fisheries

Potential Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Managed Species, Northeast Shelf, U.S. Evaluated anticipated local changes in ocean acidification on a 25-, 50-, and 100-year timescale. Potential species were evaluated for potential effects from changes in pH and carbonate ion concentration across a variety of habitats (estuarine to shelf systems) and life histories (sessile vs. migratory) to evaluate potential effects.

Offshore Wind Fisheries Monitoring Plan, New Jersey Coordinated development of a fisheries monitoring plan including permitting of a combined trawl survey, baited trap survey, hook and line survey, hydraulic dredge clam survey, and inshore clam dredge survey. Maintained permitting compliance of field operations during project initiation.

Monitoring

Deepwater Current Monitoring, Gulf of Mexico Managed installation and remote maintenance of real-time data of deepwater currents (0–1,500m+) for numerous offshore operators in the Gulf of Mexico. Responsible for real-time data delivery of current velocities and near-real-time data archiving to the National Data Buoy Center for drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico. Maintained compliance with BSEE NTL-2018-G01 for offshore operators.

Submerged Aquatic Vegetation Mitigation, New Jersey Managed Tier-2 submerged aquatic vegetation survey along proposed cable route and calculated potential impacts. This included coordination of proposed calculation methodologies with both state and federal agencies. Developed additional monitoring measures approved by state and federal agencies to quantify postdisturbance impacts.

Hydrographic Structure and Plankton Community Assessment, Continental Shelf, Northeastern U.S. Collected hydrographic and planktonic samples from a merchant vessel of opportunity to evaluate changes in community composition and hydrographic structure of the Gulf Stream and slope waters along a transect from New York to Bermuda.

Marine Science

Inorganic Nutrient Distributions and Survey Methods, Gulf of Maine Consolidated historical nutrient data for the Gulf of Maine to establish baseline climatologies and determine time-series trends. Identified data gaps and sampling strategies to reduce uncertainty in ecological model inputs.

Inorganic Nutrient Time-Series and Environmental Covariates, Gulf of Maine Performed calculation of a spatially explicit time series for inorganic nutrient distributions in the Gulf of Maine and performed analysis of environmental factors that influenced both temporal and spatial trends.

Potential Magnitude of Ocean Acidification, Northeast Shelf U.S. Analyzed historical measures of inorganic carbonate in the Gulf of Maine and Mid-Atlantic Bight. Developed spatial gridded seasonal climatologies for baseline conditions spanning several decades. These data were coupled with Earth Systems 2 (ES2M) global climate model outputs of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to assess potential changes to inorganic carbon concentrations along the Northeast Shelf ecosystem at 25-, 50-, and 100-year timescales.

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