To install an in-sity, remote sensing network at Stone Laboratory.

To implement the field study, suitable bottom substrates must be found and surveyed, thus the need for a boat, SCUBA gear, and a time commitment from staff at the Stone Laboratory. The Lab Director, John Hageman, will assist in locating suitable substrates. John knows the locations and types of local substrates offshore of the lab facilities and has provided valuable advise on deployments during a prior visit. Once suitable sites are selected, sensors will be cabled to a shore-based computer and a stable power supply. Development funds would also be used to buy and install cabling and a conduit. The cables will convey power to the in-situ sensors from the shore-based station, as well as transmitting the data from the in-situ sensors to the shore-based computer. The conduit will protect the cable from lightning and chafing and cutting during high wave/current events. No adequate facility exists to house the computer, power supply, conduits/cables and connection to the Internet, so some modifications must be made to one room of an existing building at the laboratory.

SCUBA will be used to: 1) locate suitable substrates offshore of the laboratory facility and 2) deploy a suit of automated sensors. A spectral absorption/transmissometer (AC-9, WET Labs Inc.) will be used to characterize particle profiles near the bed. An acoustic Doppler velocimeter (ADV-Oceans, SonTek Inc.) will transmit data on mean and turbulence flows and wave spectra. Sensors will be mounted into a sturdy frame non-obtrusive to the flow. Cables will be run along the bottom inside a conduit and connected to a power supply and a data logging computer, both based at a nearby shore-based facility.

During the summer of 2000, the profiling system was installed, software written and the system tested. In the summer of 2001 an PC-ADP current meter (Dr. D. Foster's project) was added to the bio-optical profiler enabling the system to collect bio-physical profiles. During the summer of 2001, the system recored a number of events and biological processes, the most prominent of which was the seiche event that caused resuspension up to 1 m off the bed. During the fall of 2001, the system was dismantled.

A new PC-ADP current meter was purchased by Drs. Fortner and Granata in the spring of 2002. This was tested and confirgured to the system. This new system was deployed in the summer of 2002 and returned 3 months of data that are currently being analyzed. The sensors were removed during the winter but will be re-deployed in the summer of 2003.