Tampa Deep Sea Xplorers consists of a small team of individuals who are committed to advancing the state-of-the-art of deep sea exploration. TDSX was formed in July 2016 for the purpose of competing in the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE which was sponsored by the XPRIZE Foundation, Shell Oil, and NOAA. Our team was awarded “Runner Up” in the NOAA Challenge portion of the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE (2019) and was one of seventeen semi-finalist teams in the overall competition (2018). Since the competition TDSX has been the recipient of a NOAA Phase 1 SBIR grant to develop a new compact underwater Lidar system. The phase 1 award ran from September 2021 to March 2022 and was successful in proving the feasibility of designing and building the Lidar. We were then awarded a phase 2 grant to build the Lidar system, that award will begin in August 2022 and will run for 22 months. TDSX will build and test 2 compact Lidar systems for phase 2. As part of the NOAA grant, TDSX has collaborated with several other Florida small businesses. TDSX is also a participant in a DHS Phase 1 SBIR in cooperation with Maritime Arresting Technologies base in Tarpon Springs, Florida.