Judges'Commentary 163 Judges Commentary: The Outstanding Coral reef Papers Sheila Miller Dept of Mathematical Sciences U.S. Military Academy West Point, NY Melissa Garren Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation Scripps Institution of Oceanography University of California-San Diego La jolla, CA Rodney sturdivant Dept of Mathematical Sciences U.S. Military Academy West Point, ny Rodney Sturdivant@usma. edu Introduction The Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling(ICM)e is an opportunity for teams of students to tackle challenging real-world problems that require a wide breadth of understanding in multiple academic subjects. This years problem required a particularly deep understanding of ecology to model a solution fectively. Due to the rapid growth of aquaculture facilities currently being installed in or adjacent to many sensitive coastal ecosystems, research into sustainable culturing methods is an active area of investigation. Seven judges gathered in late March to select the most successful entries of this challenging competition out of an impressive set of submissions The UMAP Joumal 30(2)(2009)163-168. @Copyright 2009 by CoMAP, Inc. Allrights reserved. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice. Abstracting with credit is permitted, but copyrights for components of this work owned by others than COMAP must be honored. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists requires prior permission from COMAP.Judges' Commentary 163 Judges' Commentary: The Outstanding Coral Reef Papers Sheila Miller Dept. of Mathematical Sciences U.S. Military Academy West Point, NY Melissa Garren Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation Scripps Institution of Oceanography University of California-San Diego La Jolla, CA Rodney Sturdivant Dept. of Mathematical Sciences U.S. Military Academy West Point, NY Rodney. Sturdivant@usma. edu Introduction The Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (ICM)® is an opportunity for teams of students to tac1de challenging real-world problems that require a wide breadth of understanding in multiple academic subjects. This year's problem required a particularly deep understanding of ecology to model a solution effectively. Due to the rapid growth of aquaculture facilities currently being installed in or adjacent to many sensitive coastal ecosystems, research into sustainable culturing methods is an active area of investigation. Seven judges gathered in late March to select the most successful entries of this challenging competition out of an impressive set of submissions. The UMAPJourna130 (2) (2009)163-168. @Copyright2009byCOMAP, Inc. All rights reserved. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or dassroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice. Abstracting with credit is permitted, but copyrights for components of this work owned by others than COMAP must be honored. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to lists requires prior permission from COMAR