Human safety, prosperity depend on better ocean observing system: ...(; important opportunities exist for comb...)

Date:11/25/2007

; important opportunities exist for combining biological and physical data to better understand the linkage between marine ecosystems and ocean dynamics, says David Farmer, Fellow of the Royal Society and head of the University of Rhode Islands Graduate School of Oceanography.

Among technologies deployed by ocean observers:

Diving Robotic Probes

Deployments today include some 3,000 small, drifting Argo probes that measure pressure, salinity and temperature at depths down to 2 km and return to the surface every 10 days to transmit readings via satellite. The instruments measure conditions driving climate change. POGO officials say up to 10 times as many floats are needed to produce a high-resolution global picture of marine conditions.

Unmanned vehicles and research vessels

Field testing is underway of so-called air-clippers: atmosphere and ocean surface sensors tethered to balloons. With these sensors, scientists have achieved concurrent atmospheric and ocean measurements from within the eye of a strong cyclone where the balloons become trapped.

Meanwhile, scientists using robotic submersible equipment to record life and conditions in the remote deep ocean say they have barely scratched the surface with resources available.

Aboard research ships, scientists can sample and monitor marine species distribution and abundance, and develop the next generation of observing technologies devices, for example, that perform at-sea DNA sequencing of microbial, bacterial, and planktonic life forms, yielding real-time marine equivalents of pollen counts.

Innovative Sonar Approaches

The naval acoustics technology of transmitting sound in all directions but detecting it with a hydrophone array and then transforming the signal into an image of objects in the ocean, has been demonstrated with spectacular success in the coastal ocean. Images covering thousands of square kilometres have revea
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Contact: Terry Collins terrycollins@rogers.com 416-538-8712 University of California - San Diego Source:Eurekalert

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