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鈥淚f I ever write an autobiography, I鈥檇 have to name it 'The Accidental Hydrographer,'鈥� quips , UNH Associate Director of the . He gets terribly seasick, for starters 鈥� not the best attribute for a scientist who studies and surveys the seafloor, he notes. Then he insists that he was really more interested in electrical engineering when he began his career.

His self-deprecating humor aside, Calder鈥檚 circuitous route into hydrography has yielded tremendous benefits for the seafloor mapping field worldwide. Perhaps most notably, his work on echosounder data processing has been adopted as an industry standard and resulted in massive time savings and increased efficiencies. Now, The Hydrographic Society of America has elected Calder to the 2025 Hydrographer Hall of Fame, a prestigious award bestowed every two years to individuals who have made significant advancements in the science of hydrographic surveying, educated other hydrographers and displayed exemplary service to the field.

Calder is the fourth CCOM researcher to receive this award, joining previous awardees听John Hughes Clarke, UNH professor of Earth sciences and ocean engineering, Andy Armstrong, Co-Director for CCOM/JHC, and Larry Mayer, Director for CCOM/JHC.

Mayer notes that Calder鈥檚 contributions to hydrography have been remarkable: He has provided fundamental theoretical contributions which he then backed up with operational code; he has led numerous seafloor mapping cruises around the world; and more recently he designed and built crowd-sourcing hardware and software that is being put into service on small vessels around the world to help map the seafloor.

In addition, Mayer says that Calder 鈥渉as been a selfless contributor to numerous committees and working groups and a mentor to many students and colleagues. He鈥檚 one of the brightest and nicest people I know. We鈥檙e lucky to have him in our profession and I believe he is more than deserving of this entry into The Hydrographic Society of America鈥檚 Hall of Fame.鈥�

Back at the start of his career, Calder was interested in the interface between hardware and software. Through a series of professional networking connections, Mayer caught wind of Calder鈥檚 skills and recruited him to help start up CCOM in 2000. During his first at-sea project, Calder was frustrated by how long it took to process the seafloor mapping data, which has a lot of 鈥渘oise,鈥� or extraneous data, that needs to be cleaned up. He was also befuddled by the fact that none of the bathymetric charts acknowledged or incorporated uncertainty in the seafloor depth measurements. So after that first voyage, he came back to UNH and began working on a solution. The result was a technique called Combined Uncertainty and Bathymetric Estimator, or CUBE.

"Every so often, you build something new or find something that no one has seen before, and for a short period of time, you're the only person on Earth who knows about it. That's a rare and wonderful thing, and it's what keeps me going."

Calder 鈥� who is originally from Scotland 鈥� initially took some heat from the hydrographic industry because this algorithm used methods that were technically illegal on this side of the pond. However, CUBE was deemed so valuable and important that the regulations were rewritten to allow its transfer to and use by hydrographers all around the world; CUBE has since been incorporated into almost every commercial and open-source hydrographic processing package available.

At this point, Calder reaches over to his office files and pulls out a drawing that a friend made for him: It鈥檚 a comic strip in the style of Dilbert featuring two scientists discussing CUBE. 鈥淵ou know you鈥檝e really made it when someone turns you into a comic strip or a meme,鈥� he jokes.

CUBE was just the start; Mayer explains that Calder went on to provide leadership and guidance for another paradigm-shifting approach to hydrographic processing known as the Navigation Surface 鈥� a new approach for data storage and generalization, and he led a community-wide effort to establish an open format for Navigation Surface data.

Paradigm shifts aside, Calder says what drives him is the novelty that comes with his work, like discovering underwater volcanoes in a region previously assumed to be pancake flat. 鈥淓very so often, you build something new or find something that no one has seen before, and for a short period of time, you鈥檙e the only person on Earth who knows about it. That鈥檚 a rare and wonderful thing, and it鈥檚 what keeps me going.鈥�

Regarding the Hydrographer Hall of Fame, 鈥淚鈥檓 so grateful for the opportunity to be here 鈥� it wasn鈥檛 the career I thought I was going to have, but it鈥檚 so much more than I could have imagined as an undergrad,鈥� Calder says. 鈥淚鈥檝e been lucky that I鈥檝e worked with people who were willing to let me work on what I wanted, which is very rare. If it wasn鈥檛 for all those people, I wouldn鈥檛 be here today."