Image Credit: Abbey Wakely, SECOORA Five years ago, the Ocean Monitoring and Prediction Laboratory at University of South Florida’s (USF) College of Marine Science (CMS) installed an oceanographic and meteorological monitoring station in Clam Bayou, a thriving estuary near Gulfport, Florida. This station became a component of the
USF Coastal Ocean Monitoring and Prediction Systems (COMPS). On March 5th, 2014 USF COMPS Systems Engineer, Jeffrey Scudder, and
YSI Senior Applications Specialist, Mike Lizotte, upgraded the water quality instrumentation at the USF COMPS Clam Bayou Station. With the installation of this new sensor, this site will become a part of the already existing USF COMPS coastal stations that are funded by SECOORA. Mark Luther, Director of Ocean Monitoring and Prediction Lab, is the Principal Investigator for the SECOORA funded USF COMPS Coastal Stations project. The new
YSI Xylem EXO2 Multi-Parameter Water Quality Monitoring sonde system measures salinity, dissolved oxygen, pH, water temperature, turbidity, chlorophyll, blue green algae, and fluorescent dissolved organic matter. This water quality data augments the station’s wind, air temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, and barometric pressure measurements. Over Coming BiofoulingThe old water quality measurement system became extremely degraded by biofouling, a major issue in continuous coastal monitoring, and could no longer collect data. Biofouling is the growth ...
