Highland Council Chooses YSI for Algal Bloom Studies

OSIL has just supplied an YSI environmental monitoring buoy and sonde system to the Highland Council in Scotland for use in an important new monitoring programme. Known as the ‘CAPTOR Project’ (Coordinated Aquaculture Monitoring Programme in Loch Torridon), the study will examine factors that contribute to harmful algal blooms around Scottish fish farms.
Over the last thirty years the frequency of toxic algal events has increased on a global basis, but the environmental conditions that trigger such blooms are not well understood. The damage of such blooms on fish stock has resulted in the CAPTOR project in which fish farmers are working together with the Highland Council, the Marine Laboratory, Aberdeen University Marine Biological Station and Sunderland Marine Mutual Insurance Company Ltd., through its specialist risk management company AR(M) Ltd.
The project intends to provide fish farmers with forewarning of environmental conditions likely to facilitate the growth of blooms of harmful planktonic organisms. By using a monitoring system based on YSI’s EMM 700 buoy and the YSI 6600 EDS (extended deployment sonde), data can be obtained on parameters which include: chlorophyll, turbidity, dissolved oxygen, pH and CTD.