A novel by R.W. Tide
He came aboard to count fish,
not investigate a death.
A research vessel. A missing record.
A storm that leaves nowhere to go.
Available now
MARITIME SUSPENSE · THE ACOUSTIC SHADOW
01 / Aboard Meridian
Marcus Finch expected quieter work aboard the research vessel Meridian. Then he finds a scientist dead in the wet lab.
An electrical accident seems the simplest explanation. But research records are missing, accounts don’t quite fit, and the former naval investigator finds himself asking questions he thought he’d left behind.
As a nor’easter closes around the ship, questions of trust become questions of survival.
02 / Eyes on the seafloor
Lower a camera. Bring a hidden world into view.
For a scallop survey, the seafloor itself is the evidence. Images let researchers observe animals and habitat, then use those observations to estimate what lives across a much larger area.
It’s patient work: returning to survey stations, examining images, and turning individual observations into a picture of a fishery.
Real science / SMAST
The School for Marine Science & Technology’s Marine Fisheries Field Research Group has conducted cooperative drop-camera surveys with the commercial scallop industry since 1999. Its survey work includes Georges Bank and the Mid-Atlantic scallop grounds.
Explore SMAST’s research03 / The working ship
Science at sea depends on people who do very different jobs, in very close quarters.
Navigation, engineering, and deck operations make the science possible. The ship is both a workplace and a home.
Samples and instrument records turn ocean conditions into evidence that scientists can study.
Survey equipment connects a moving ship to the water and seafloor beneath it.
Meridian is fictional. The work has real counterparts: the University of Delaware’s R/V Hugh R. Sharp supported NOAA’s Atlantic sea scallop dredge survey from 2008 to 2023.
Explore the real scallop survey04 / The Gulf of Maine
Beneath the water is a landscape shaped by ice.
The Gulf of Maine’s glaciated seafloor holds exposed bedrock, gravel, and areas of finer sediment. What looks like an unbroken surface from the ship conceals a varied landscape below.
That physical ground matters to the living world above it. Understanding habitat begins with understanding what’s underfoot—even when it’s out of sight.
Explore it ashore
You don’t need a research vessel to start exploring. Discover the rocky shore and tide pools at Odiorne Point in New Hampshire, or explore the coastal ledges at Two Lights State Park in Maine.
Start with Seacoast Science Center’s guide to the tide pools just outside its doors.
Explore Odiorne’s tide pools Visit Seacoast Science CenterExplore the rocky coast, then look closer with the Maine Geological Survey’s guide to the area.
Visit Two Lights State Park Read the local geology guideBackground contours are illustrative, not a navigation or bathymetric chart.
The Acoustic Shadow / R.W. Tide
Compromised loyalties. Valuable science.
And a storm closing in.
Available now on Amazon.