More Monitoring in the Western Med

The contract award comprises a variety of monitoring equipment, including buoys, ROVs, gliders, as well as service and maintenance efforts. AXYS will supply two 1.8 metre WatchMate data buoys. These new monitoring platforms will be deployed in 40m and 800m of water respectively, and will capture a wide variety of data parameters, including winds, barometric pressure, temperature, waves, currents, conductivity and temperature (CTD), and dissolved oxygen, to name a few. Sub surface sensors will be deployed along a mooring line and will transmit data via acoustic modem up to the WatchMate buoy. The buoys will transmit all collected data each hour via two types of telemetry: GSM for the near shore buoy and Iridium satellite for the offshore buoy. The buoys will be outfitted with secondary telemetry devices and all data will be logged on board for time series and historical studies.

Data will be received and displayed by researchers at SOCIB, a Coastal Ocean and Observing and Forecasting System located in the Balearic Islands. SOCIB is a multi-platform distributed and integrated system that will provide streams of oceanographic data and modelling services to support operational oceanography in a European and international framework, therefore also contributing to the needs of marine and coastal research in a global change context.

The WatchMate buoys will be delivered and deployed this fall.