CHESAPEAKEQUARTERLYCHESAPEAKEQUARTERLY

Watching the Bay & Beyond

MARYLAND SEA GRANT COLLEGE • VOLUME 15, NUMBER 2

Observing the Bay, theCoast, & the Ocean

C arlos Lozano startshis days at theChesapeake

Biological Laboratory(CBL) by checking a web-site that displays informationabout water quality andweather conditions in theBay. Modern digital instru-ments at the end of the lab’shistoric research pier test thewaters every 15 minutes. “IfI see any issues with it, I’ll goout there and check,” saysLozano, a research assistantwith the University ofMaryland Center for Environmental Science. As he marches along a wooden pier thatnow juts 750 feet out into the mouth of the Patuxent River, Lozano follows in thefootsteps of generations who have walked the CBL pier for science. Reginald Truitt, thefounder of the CBL, started the monitoring program in 1938. In the early days, instru-ments were basic; to take the temperature of the water, someone had to walk to the endof the pier and lower a thermometer at the end of a metal tube to a depth of onemeter. Truitt knew that continuous, long-term records were essential to understanding theBay and exposing future changes. In fact, in 2006 — almost 70 years after the measur-ing began at the end of his Solomons Island research pier — the record revealed thesubtle trace of global climate change in the Bay. And today, the record continues togrow, nearing 80 years long. Regular monitoring remains essential to understanding keyprocesses in the estuary, managing its fisheries sustainably, and anticipating the impactsof climate change. Since Truitt’s time, the business of measuring things has dramatically surpassed thethermometer-on-a-stick approach. The CBL pier has become a point on a nationwidemap of coastal observation systems. Networks of sensors keep watch on estuaries, coast-lines, the Great Lakes, the continental shelf waters, and the open ocean. If you have spent time on the Chesapeake Bay, you’ve probably seen at least oneexample of the region’s observing systems at work: an instrumented buoy. Some ofthem measure winds, tides, and water temperature and salinity, which ship pilots use tonavigate the Bay. Or you may have seen one of the research boats that stop at multiplespots along the mainstem of the Bay to measure dissolved oxygen, nutrient levels, andother key indicators of the estuary’s ecological health. Beyond the mouth of the Bay, other observation systems monitor the Mid-Atlanticcoastal ocean. The platforms include shore radars, jumbo-sized buoys, untethered“drifters” that ride the global currents, and torpedo-shaped robotic underwater vehiclesthat cruise under the waves. Hundreds of miles above, satellites scan the sea surface.

CHESAPEAKEQUARTERLYChesapeake Quarterly explores scientific, environ - mental , and cultural issues relevant to the ChesapeakeBay and its watershed. The magazine is produced andfunded by the Maryland Sea Grant College. Thecollege receives support from the National Oceanicand Atmospheric Administratio n and the state ofMaryland.

Maryland Sea Grant College staff: Director, FredrikaMoser; Director of Communications, Jeffrey Brainard;Magazine Editor, Michael W. Fincham, ScienceWriter, Daniel Pendick; Production Editor/ArtDirector, Sandy Rodgers

Send items for the magazine to:

Maryland Sea Grant College 4321 Hartwick Road, Suite 300 University System of Maryland College Park, Maryland 20740 301.405.7500, fax 301.314.5780 e-mail: mdsg@mdsg.umd.edu www.mdsg.umd.edu www.chesapeakequarterly.net

contents 2 Observing the Bay, Coast, & Ocean Sophisticated networks that keep watch on the nation’s waters

4 The Buoys That Never Sleep The rise and fall and rebirth of a Chesapeake observing system

10 Where the Wild Fish Are Tracking the travels of stripers and sturgeon and rays

13 Coastal Radar to the Rescue Measuring ocean currents and helping save lives

14 Better Tools for Cleaner Water Start your sensors: inventing new technology to detect nutrient pollution

Cover photo: This photograph was taken onthe day this buoy was deployed for the MarylandArtifical Reef Initiative. Part of the ChesapeakeBay Interpretive Buoy System (CBIBS), the buoycollects data for boaters, students, and scientists.PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL EVERSMIER FOR THE

MARYLAND ARTIFICIAL REEF INITIATIVE

June 2016

Volume 15, Number 2

Instruments at the end of the Chesapeake BiologicalLaboratory’s research pier at the mouth of the Patuxent Riverhave measured water quality continuously since 1938.PHOTOGRAPH, SARAH BRZEZSINSKI

And we have learned important things from this mass ofmeasuring. For one thing, ocean observing has advanced ourunderstanding of the global climate system and our ability topredict it. The Tropical Atmosphere Ocean (TAO)/TRITONarray of 70 buoys measures heat in the upper layer of the tropi-cal Pacific Ocean. The array makes it possible to predict theperiodic pattern of warming and cooling known as the ElNiño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). And it’s important toknow, because ENSO can affect weather patterns far away. Forexample, the 2015-2016 El Niño was linked to a snowier win-ter in Maryland. In the early 2000s, the federal government moved to wran-gle the nation’s multitude of coastal and ocean observing sys-tems into a coherent whole. It came to be called the IntegratedOcean Observing System, or IOOS. This national “system ofsystems” would also be the United States’ contribution to theUnited Nations-sponsored Global Ocean Observing System. IOOS, an interagency program led by the National Oceanicand Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), coordinates observingsystems spread among 17 federal agencies and scores of universi-ties, research labs, and other organizations. Each of 11 major geo-graphic areas hosts a regional observing system. The ChesapeakeBay, for example, lies within the Mid-Atlantic RegionalAssociation Coastal Ocean Observing System (see map). The “I”in IOOS is integration, shorthand for the ways this program helpsobservation systems to work together to serve key national needs— like ensuring maritime safety, managing fisheries, protectingecosystem health, and adapting to climate change. The Chesapeake Bay region’s major observation systems areplugged into the IOOS switchboard. This issue of ChesapeakeQuarterly offers stories about coastal observing systems — past,present, and future — and how they benefit the Bay. “The Buoys

That Never Sleep” (p. 4) recounts the rise and fall of theChesapeake Bay Observing System (CBOS), a pioneering effortto continuously monitor the Bay’s water and weather. “Wherethe Wild Fish Are” (p. 10) explains how Bay scientists areworking with IOOS to create a national database for trackingthe far-ranging migrations of striped bass and other species inthe Chesapeake and Mid-Atlantic region. “Coastal Radar to theRescue” (p. 13) highlights the critical contribution that coastalradar systems make to Coast Guard search-and-rescue missionsin the Bay and beyond. Finally, “Better Tools for Cleaner Water”(p. 14) explains how a coalition of federal agencies is workingwith private industry and academic labs to create inexpensivereal-time sensors that could form networks to monitor nutrientpollution in the Chesapeake Bay and many other places affectedby this problem. As the CBOS story highlights, building new observing sys-tems is just the first step. It can be much harder to keep themfully funded and operating, day after day, year after year. IOOS’smanagement believes the key to sustaining support for observingsystems is creating successful new “information products” — likea national fish tracking database — that fulfill the needs of multi-ple users and help them solve important problems. The benefits of coastal and ocean observing are not alwaysforeseeable in the beginning — as when the signal of globalwarming emerged nearly 70 years after Reginald Truitt launchedthe measuring program at the end of Chesapeake BiologicalLab’s pier. But it’s wise to invest in long-term measurement-making because of the many ways it can inform science and nat-ural resource management, says Thomas Miller, the lab’s currentdirector. “Monitoring data is one of those things that you don’trealize you need — until you do.” — Daniel Pendick

Volume 15, Number 2 • 3

A vast network of individual observing systems keepswatch on U.S. harbors, bays, estuaries, coasts, and oceans.A national program, the Integrated Ocean ObservingSystem, coordinates the work of 11 sub-networks alignedwith geographic regions. MAP, NOAA/IOOS

Integrated Ocean ObservingSystem (IOOS)

AOOS: Alaska Ocean Observing System CariCOOS: Caribbean Coastal Ocean

Observing System CeNCOOS: Central and Northern

California Ocean Observing System GCOOS: Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean

Observing System GLOS: Great Lakes Observing System MARACOOS: Mid-Atlantic Regional

Association Coastal Ocean ObservingSystem

NANOOS: Northwest Association ofNetworked Ocean Observing Systems

NERACOOS: Northeastern RegionalAssociation of Coastal OceanObserving Systems

PacIOOS: Pacific Islands OceanObserving System

SCCOOS: Southern California CoastalOcean Observing System

SECOORA: Southeast Coastal OceanObserving Regional Association

4 • Chesapeake Quarterly

On a freezing February morningin 1996, the phone rang inCarole Derry’s office at the

Horn Point Laboratory. “Hey, your buoyis in the Choptank River,” the caller said.On the line was an officer on one ofMaryland’s icebreaking ships that wasopening channels in the Chesapeake. Heknew the buoy did not belong in theriver. And so did Derry. She was theresearch assistant at the lab charged withmaintaining a fleet of data-gatheringbuoys stationed along the mainstem ofthe Chesapeake Bay. “I said, no,” Derryrecalls. “I don’t believe you.” But the officer on the MarylandDepartment of Natural Resources(DNR) ship was right: a winter stormhad uprooted a one-ton scientific buoymoored off James Island and shoved it 22miles north, with its mooring chains andanchors — a pair of cast-iron boxcarwheels — trailing behind like a giantwatch bob. Then Derry got another call: thebuoy had made it as far upriver as CastleHaven Point. This was just a few milesfrom Derry’s office at Horn PointLaboratory, part of the University ofMaryland Center for EnvironmentalScience (UMCES), where the buoy wasoutfitted. “So we went down to CastleHaven and it was right there,” Derry says.“That was the buoy that was cominghome to me.” The bright-yellow buoy, 18 feet tallfrom its base to the top of its instru-mented metal mast, had stopped transmit-ting data to shore on February 3rd. Slabs

of winter ice, propelled by storm winds,had pulled the buoy free and dragged itnorth; then the wind shifted, blowing iteastward into the Choptank River. TheDNR boat eventually snagged the buoy,craned it aboard, and ferried it intoCambridge Creek near the lab. Derrygreeted the banged-up traveler at thedock. “I went down to see it and said,‘That’s my buoy!’”

It was actually Bill Boicourt’s buoy. Hewas Carole Derry’s boss and a physicaloceanographer who strung a network ofscientific buoys down the mainstem ofthe Chesapeake Bay. This pioneeringeffort came to be known as theChesapeake Bay Observing System(CBOS). Boicourt came into oceanography as aprotégé of Don Pritchard, the distin-guished scientist who founded theChesapeake Bay Institute at JohnHopkins University and then made themeasurements and worked out the math-

ematics that documented the basic two-layer flow of the estuary — along thebottom, an incoming surge of dense, saltywater from the ocean; along the surface,an outgoing stream of fresh water fromall the Bay’s rivers. With his training, Boicourt wasuniquely qualified to build a network ofscientific buoys in the Chesapeake Bay.While still a graduate student, he had ledexpeditions to study large-scale circula-tion patterns in the continental shelfwaters beyond the mouth of the Bay. Todo that, Boicourt deployed scientificbuoys for collecting long-term records ofocean temperature, salinity, and currents.These records led to new insights intothe physical structures and processes inthose offshore waters — including theChesapeake Bay plume, the vast tongueof estuarine water that extends far out tosea from the mouth of the Bay. CBOSwould allow Boicourt to use the methodshe refined on the continental shelf toprobe the rhythms and processes of theChesapeake. In two decades with CBOS,Boicourt’s team fielded as many as sevendifferent buoys. They kept tabs 24 hours aday on winds, temperature, humidity, cur-rents, salinity, dissolved oxygen, and otheressential information about the Bay andtransmitted the data live on the internet. That wild winter ride up theChoptank was just one in a long series ofchallenges that Boicourt faced in keepingCBOS alive and collecting data. Othershowstoppers included buoys beingstruck by boats, burned-out light bulbs,

Could a network of data-gathering buoysfinally reveal the mysterious inner working

of the Chesapeake Bay?

THE BUOYS THAT NEVER SLEEP

By Daniel Pendick

dead batteries, and instrumentsgummed up by seaweed and barna-cles. But along the way, the networkwould generate reams of valuabledata that advanced Boicourt’sresearch — particularly his under-standing of estuarine circulation —and teach valuable lessons abouthow to build coastal and oceanobserving systems that last.

CBOS Comes to North Bay

On December 18, 1990, Boicourtstood in a parking lot by the docks atMillard Tydings Memorial Park inHavre de Grace, Maryland, clutchingthe end of a long red ribbon andsmiling for the camera.VIPs andguests stood along the length of theribbon, stretched taut for cutting bythe ceremonial scissors . Behind them stood the firstbuoy in the CBOS network, gleam-ing with its fresh coat of yellowpaint. Dubbed the North Bay buoy,it had a disc-shaped hull that housedadvanced radio telemetry equip-ment. The top of its tall mastsported a suite of meteorologicalinstruments. Boicourt was getting his chanceto take long-term data gathering inthe Chesapeake Bay to a new level— thanks to Cathy Riley, a state sen-ator from Harford County at thenorth end of the Bay. She hadsecured an appropriation to build theNorthern Chesapeake Bay Researchand Monitoring Facility at TydingsPark. This modest one-story buildingand its 50-foot radio mast wouldreceive hourly bursts of data fromthe North Bay buoy — as soon asthe spring thaw allowed Boicourt tomoor the scientific sentinel into theBay. The small building in Tydings Parkhoused considerable hope — that thiswould be the start of a new kind ofobservation system for Bay science.Boicourt and several other scientists atUMCES hoped to build a network of sixpermanent buoy observation stations

down the axis of the estuary, from themouth of the Susquehanna River in thenorth to the mouth of the estuary in thesouth. It had never been done, but the sci-entists thought it was time. By then, the state of the art in estuaryobserving was the Chesapeake BayProgram run by the Environmental

Protection Agency. This state-federal part-nership was taking monthly measure-ments down the length of the estuary,primarily from ships. But that left gaps inwhich short-term events, like storms,could alter the Chesapeake ecosystemundetected. The architects of CBOSargued that the buoys could fill those

Volume 15, Number 2 • 5

Bill Boicourt’s old buoy network was called theChesapeake Bay Observing System (CBOS forshort), and it measured and monitored weatherand water conditions in Maryland’s half of the Bay.Today, ten buoys in the newer Chesapeake BayInterpretive Buoy System (CBIBS) probe the lengthof the estuary. One of its buoys (opposite page)grew top heavy with ice and snow and capsized offAnnapolis Harbor. PHOTOGRAPHS, NOAA CHESAPEAKE BAY OFFICE

(OPPOSITE PAGE) AND DANIEL PENDICK (ABOVE)

gaps by continuously monitoring the Bayfrom permanent observing stations withbuoys that would provide stable mooringsfor a variety of scientific instruments atthe surface, at mid-water, and on thebottom .

Boicourt hoped that CBOS wouldanswer important scientific questionsabout the Chesapeake Bay, like howwinds influenced the workings of theestuary in different ways. Research byBoicourt and others suggested that winds

blowing across the surface could perturbits two-layer flow. Depending on direc-tion, winds can speed up or slow downthose outgoing and incoming flows.Summer winds can let low-oxygen waterslip out of the deeps and into theshallows . Autumn winds can help oxy-gen-rich surface waters mix with deeperwaters. In fact, strong winds appeared tostir up the Chesapeake so much that thetwo-layer flow temporarily disappeared.But how, when, and why were windsdriving these changes? What were thephysics? The veteran oceanographer inBoicourt knew that to answer such ques-tions, Bay scientists needed long, continu-ous records like the ones he had painstak-ingly pieced together with buoys on thecontinental shelf. To start to see patternsand understand the underlying processes,you had to be there when it happened.You needed a buoy out there, waiting,watching, measuring.

Keeping CBOS Alive

The North Bay buoy was tethered to itsmooring in the spring of 1991 offHowell Point, at the mouth of theSassafras River. Then it started beamingdata across ten miles of open water to theTydings Park receiving station. A secondbuoy started taking data in 1993, at theMid Bay observing station in the watersoff the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant. The North Bay and Mid Bay buoysremained in continuous service for morethan two decades. Five other buoys wentin and out of the water, some for only aseason or two. Their moorings were posi-tioned at various locations: at the BayBridge (known as Baltimore Approach inthe CBOS network); at the mouth of theChoptank River; upriver in the Patuxentand Pocomoke Rivers; and as far southas Smith Point, at the Virginia border(see map). CBOS never expanded as farsouth as the estuary mouth, as originallyenvisioned . Once CBOS was open for business,the hardest work lay ahead: keeping itrunning. The project hit some practicalchallenges that buoys of all kinds still face

6 • Chesapeake Quarterly

auxiliary buoy

radar reflector

subsurfacefloat

bullet float

sensor to measure temperature, salinity & dissolvedoxygen

taut wiremooring

boxcar wheels used as anchors

sensor to measuretemperature, salinity & dissolvedoxygen

bottom landerinstrument platform

acoustic Doppler velocimeterto measurecurrents

anemometer measures wind speed

flashing beacon light

flashing beacon light

solar panels

radio antenna

sensor to measure temperature & relative humidity

A typical CBOS observing station consisted of two moorings: one for the main buoy, which con-tained a computer and radio gear to transmit data to shore, and a smaller, auxiliary buoy to holdadditional instruments. Stations collected continuous data on weather and water conditions andbeamed them back to shore. A bottom lander platform supplemented the moorings, collecting datathat needed to be retrieved later by hoisting the triangular rig to the surface. ILLUSTRATION ADAPTED BY SANDY

RODGERS FROM A DRAWING BY CAROLE DERRY AND BILL BOICOURT

in the Chesapeake. Carole Derry, whoworked as a senior faculty research assis-tant for Bill Boicourt until her retirementin May 2016, kept a binder of photosdocumenting the numerous insults visitedupon CBOS buoys by man and nature— like being run over by boats orcracked open by winter ice. Derry also built up a stack of hand-written maintenance logs in compositionnotebooks that documented the constantattention that CBOS demanded. TheNorth Bay buoy, in particular, needed tobe taken out of the water every winter toavoid ice damage. In general, the buoysneeded personal tending every four to sixweeks, whether to change instruments orbatteries or make repairs. Putting large buoys in the water or

taking them out required large boats withrigging that could handle buoys weighinga ton or more as well as moorings withanchors and chain weighing up to one-and-a-half tons. Such trips were difficultto schedule and expensive. Boicourtsometimes had to depend on CoastGuard buoy vessels — when they weren’ttoo busy tending to their own buoys. As for Boicourt, his perpetual strugglewas finding the money to pay for operat-ing and expanding CBOS. It could cost$50,000 or more per year to equip andoperate a CBOS observing station. Theoriginal funding for the North Bay sta-tion and shore facility ran out, butBoicourt still had buoys to tend andsalaries to pay. He had to piggyback much of the

cost of purchasing, outfitting, andmaintaining CBOS buoys onto hisresearch projects. If a project involvedcollecting data with a buoy, CBOScould draw on that — until the fundsran out. Then Boicourt and his teamhad to secure new funding for Chesa -peake science that could make use ofthe CBOS buoys. CBOS Data for Science

Through all the day-to-day challenges ofkeeping CBOS running, the buoys col-lected reams of data on meteorologicaland water conditions and beamed it backto shore. In the mid-90s, the data wentlive on the internet at www.CBOS.org.The science-curious general public —Boicourt calls them the “AOLers” — andrecreational boaters often accessedCBOS’s real-time data on wind, tempera-ture, and humidity. Boicourt also discov-ered to his surprise that some profession-als on the Chesapeake were visiting thesite regularly. But the web addressesended in “.mil,” not “aol.com.”

Volume 15, Number 2 • 7

Carole Derry holds a stack of handwritten maintenance logs that detail scores of repairs,upgrades, and deployments of the CBOS buoys (locations shown in map at right). The senior facultyresearch assistant, now retired, was on call to fulfill requests for CBOS data, go out on frequent boattrips to tend the buoys, and manage the reams of scientific data streaming from the CBOS observingnetwork. PHOTOGRAPH, DANIEL PENDICK; MAP, CREATED BY SANDY RODGERS ON A BASE MAP FROM VECTORSTOCK.COM

North Bay

Bay Bridge

Choptank

PatuxentMid Bay

Pocomoke

Smith Point

CBOS Buoys(various locations1991-2012)

That’s .mil as in military.Weather forecasters at thePatuxent River naval air stationwere tapping CBOS data onmeteorological conditions overthe estuary. So were computermodelers at the Army’sAberdeen Proving Ground, justacross the water from the NorthBay CBOS station. The Armytests weapons and ammunitionat Aberdeen, and the modelersused CBOS data to improvetheir predictions of how far theconcussions from the weaponsexplosions would travel andhow strong they would be.“They had the fear of blowingout stained glass windows inchurches on the Eastern Shore,”Boicourt says. Of course, he and his students werealso using CBOS data. In September2003, as Hurricane Isabel passed throughthe Chesapeake region, the Mid Baybuoy got a chance to demonstrate thescientific value of having a real-timemonitoring system in the Bay. The buoy’s current meters, at depthsof eight feet and 33 feet, recorded thestrong water motions generated as thestorm’s winds rocked the entire contentsof the estuary northward; then, as thewinds died down, the Bay sloshed backsouthward. The storm furiously mixed the estu-ary, too, which temporarily erased itsnormal two-layer structure. Boicourt’sbuoy caught the process in the act,because the current meter down at 33feet also included an instrument thatmeasured the amount of oxygen dis-solved in the water. This device, installedjust a month earlier, sat within the Bay’slow-oxygen or “hypoxic” layer. Deeper,at 62 feet, a salinity sensor was also test-ing the waters. As the hurricane winds mixed theChesapeake up, the sensors caught therise in oxygen and the fall in salinity asthe fresh upper layer and saltier lowerlayer swirled together. This “destratifica-tion” of the Bay is exactly the type of

thing that Boicourt hoped CBOS wouldsee. Such real-time monitoring, coupledwith later computer modeling studies,can confirm hypotheses and generatenew questions — in this case, about“wind forcing” of the Bay system and theeffect that has on oxygen conditions. Ironically, by the time of CBOS’sshining moment during Isabel, the con-stant scramble to piggyback the cost ofrunning the buoys onto Boicourt’sresearch funding had started to wear thin.One by one, the observing stations in theChesapeake were shut down. “We werereduced from seven to about three andthen finally two,” Boicourt says. In 2004, only the North Bay and MidBay observing stations were still takingdata. North Bay went dark in 2005. TheMid Bay station struggled along until2010. “In 2010, it started having prob-lems,” Carole Derry says. It recorded nodata in 2011. Derry says she is pretty sureit was struck in 2012 by a boater. “It wasdecapitated.”

That may have been the end of Bill’s real-time buoy network, but the dream ofbuilding a real-time scientific observingsystem for the Chesapeake Bay lives on.By the time the last CBOS buoy stoppedtransmitting data, the National Oceanic

and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA) was completing a newnetwork of scientific sentinels: theChesapeake Bay InterpretativeBuoy System (CBIBS).

The intended purpose ofCBIBS seems right out of theplaybook of early CBOS. Thenew system provides real-timeinformation about weather andwater conditions for scientistsand citizens. The buoys stretchthe full length of the Bay, fromthe Susquehanna River to themouth of the estuary. Buoys sitat the mouths of major rivers aswell as at stations far upriver —from Jamestown in Virginia,to the National Harbor inMaryland.

The CBIBS network initiallyobtained funding as part of the CaptainJohn Smith Chesapeake NationalHistoric Trail, with buoys marking keyspots in the estuary that Captain JohnSmith visited from 1607 to 1609. Thefirst three buoys went in the water in2007 — one at historic Jamestown — tomark 400 years since Smith’s arrival inthe Chesapeake region. A boater orkayaker can call the historic markers bycell phone and hear the historic back-ground for each location. NOAA is working to make CBIBSbuoy data useful and available to as manyresearchers as possible. Making that hap-pen is Byron Kilbourne’s new assign-ment. The recently minted Ph.D.oceanographer from the University ofWashington in Seattle joined the smallCBIBS team in Annapolis in January2016. Kilbourne is charged with keepingCBIBS fully functional, reaching out topotential users in the science communityand making sure the data comply withquality standards. Kilbourne hopes to alsouse CBIBS information to do some orig-inal research of his own. Thanks in part to Boicourt’s buoys,CBIBS has an opportunity to fulfill thedream of a real-time observing system forthe Chesapeake Bay. CBOS showed whatsuch a system could look like. “We

8 • Chesapeake Quarterly

A beat-up buoy from the CBOS network lies on its side in open-air storage at the edge of a parking lot at the Horn Point Laboratory.During a winter storm in 1996, fierce winds dragged this buoy and itsmooring miles up the Choptank River. Despite the dings in its foamouter shell, the buoy continued to serve Bay science for many years.PHOTOGRAPH, DANIEL PENDICK

learned a great deal about what it takesto deploy an observing system and whatit takes to maintain an observing system,”says Thomas Miller, director of theUMCES Chesapeake BiologicalLaboratory. “I think it was a visionaryexercise, well ahead of its time, and in noway did it fail. It was just not sustainable.” That lesson — that observing systemsare expensive and hard to maintain overthe long haul — is a key lesson of theCBOS saga, Boicourt says. CBOS neverlacked for what he calls “cheerleaders”

like the AOLers and the computer mod-elers at Aberdeen Proving Ground. Butthat did not translate into a sustainedannual budget — like the one CBIBSdraws on. “We learned the hard lesson of whatsustainable systems required,” Boicourtsays. “They require you to not just collectdata and make it available, but package itfor specific users in a way that will getthem to either pay for or support thecollection of it.” Although CBOS.org’s real-time data

stream has ceased, the buoys themselvescontinue to serve Bay science. Several ofthe big old buoys — including the onethat took that wild ride up the Choptankin 1996 — stand at the edge of a parkinglot at Horn Point Lab, where they greetBoicourt as he comes to work every day.They sit amidst a jumble of sphericalsteel floats, metal platforms for holdinginstruments on the Bay bottom, cast-ironboxcar wheels, and rusting piles of moor-ing chains. Boicourt has continued to deploy thebuoys for research or loan them to otherinvestigators. Though battered andbruised, several of the buoys were bob-bing in the Chesapeake as recently as2013, part of a flotilla of 20 buoys thatstudied the physical processes that linkwinds to changes in the large-scale circu-lation and mixing of the estuary. Boicourt says this recent multi-inves-tigator project was the culmination of allthe previous years of work with CBOSobserving the effects of wind on the Bay.The study benefitted from the latest tech-nology — like special sonars that lookupward from the estuary’s floor to meas-ure currents at multiple levels. One of thestudies that came out of the observingproject, led by Woods Hole scientistMalcolm Scully, offers new insights intothe details of how winds mix theChesapeake. Wind-driven breaking wavescreate spiral flows in the air above theBay, called Langmuir turbulence, whichpumps energy deep below the surfaceand mixes the upper and lower layers likean eggbeater. CBOS was put in the Bay in hopes ofgaining these kinds of physical insights.Although Boicourt is happy to tell youhow hard it was to keep CBOS afloat allthose years, his efforts did bear fruit. “Youcould argue that the time would havebeen better spent otherwise, but we got achance to do some good science,” hesays. “We have learned a lot from lookingat that old CBOS data — and I still lookat it. We know now that what happensfrom one month to another, like stormsand wind, is important.” — pendick@mdsg.umd.edu

Volume 15, Number 2 • 9

The Chesapeake Bay InterpretiveBuoy System (CBIBS) (at left)collects water and weather data at themouths of major rivers and farther upriver, too. Keeping the ten buoys up andrunning is challenging, and CBIBS’slead buoy repairwoman, Katie Kirk(below, bottom), makes frequent tripsto service the buoys. This buoy (below,top), located off Jamestown, Virginia,is part of the Captain John SmithChesapeake National Historic Trail.PHOTOGRAPHS, COURTESY NOAA CHESAPEAKE BAY

OFFICE (BELOW, BOTTOM) AND U.S. ARMY CORPS OF

ENGINEERS (BELOW, TOP); MAP, CREATED BY SANDY

RODGERS ON A BASE MAP FROM VECTORSTOCK.COM

Susquehanna

Patapsco

Annapolis

Upper Potomac

Goose’s Reef

Potomac

Stingray Point

Jamestown

Norfolk First Landing

CBIBS BuoyLocations

W hen David Secor goes fish-ing, he doesn’t bring a poleor tackle box. He brings a

laptop computer. He doesn’t even lookfor fish in the water; he looks for them inblack plastic cylinders about the size of asmall kitchen fire extinguisher. These areunderwater microphones that Secor andhis research assistant Mike O’Brien hangin the water off buoys and bridge pilingsin the Chesapeake Bay. These sensors lis-ten for the telltale sounds of passing fish. But not any fish. Secor is a fisheriesscientist from the Chesapeake BiologicalLaboratory at the University of MarylandCenter for Environmental Science, andhe is angling for fish that he has previ-ously caught, implanted with finger-sizedelectronic “pingers,” and released backinto the Bay. These gadgets emit chirps ofsound into the water every 90 secondsthat are coded to identify or “tag” eachfish. If an electronically tagged fish pingswithin the range of one of his receivers,Secor can download it. If someone else’sreceiver picks up his fish, he can eventu-

ally recover that “detection” as well,though it will take time and effort. This technology, called acoustictelemetry, is an important advance. Itallows scientists, for the first time, to trackindividual fish as they move through theirenvironment. They do not need to sur-face to be detected, as is the case forsatellite tagging. By tracking fish in theirnatural element as they pass by and pingdifferent receivers, researchers can askimportant questions about fish behavior. In the past few years, for example, thistechnology has helped Secor andO’Brien conduct a study tracking stripedbass native to the Bay as some of themhead for the coastal ocean on far-flungmigrations. “We know that within amonth or two after tagging a largestriped bass in the Potomac River, it canbe off Cape Cod,” Secor says. Acoustic fish tracking, in cases likethis, offers valuable streams of hard-to-getdata. Not just hard to get, but also a littletoo easy to lose. After all, fish taggersretire or pass away, but data should be

forever. A lot of it, however, currentlyresides on hard drives on shelves anddesks in the labs and offices of individualtaggers. It worries Secor. “This is reallyprecious data,” he says. “If we don’t have aplace to put that data it could be lost for-ever. Which is awful.” Fish tracking in the Chesapeake isheading for a major technology leap thatcould protect the precious pings recordedby fish taggers and also reduce some ofthe drudgework and delay associated withsharing that data. The new tool is calledthe Mid-Atlantic Acoustic TelemetryObservation System, or MATOS. Inessence, it’s a database that could make iteasier for scientists to collect, share, andsafely store records of marine animalmigrations in the estuary and coastal

10 • Chesapeake Quarterly

WHERETHE WILDFISH ARE

By Daniel Pendick

What oceanic highwaysdo Chesapeake fish

travel? Fish trackers ,wind farm builders,and

cargo ship captains need to know.

By implanting a small electronic trackingdevice in a cownose ray off Tilghman Island,Maryland, biologist Rob Aguilar and col-leagues with the Smithsonian EnvironmentalResearch Center (SERC) can track the animalin the Bay as it mates, raises its young, andmigrates to the coastal ocean. PHOTOGRAPH, SERC

ocean. MATOS would also make it easierfor federal resource managers to tap intofish-tracking data from across large areasof the coastal ocean. To get to this brave new world offish-following, trackers will have toupload their data to a distant computervia the web. And the architects ofMATOS will need to assure these track-ers that they can still control whom theywant to share their data with — andwhom they don’t. Fisheries ecologist Matthew Ogburnof the Smithsonian EnvironmentalResearch Center is one fish tagger whosees the potential of the new taggingtechnology. “It’s a very different way ofdoing research,” Ogburn says, “but it alsoallows you to answer very different,larger-scale questions.”

Fish Finders

Who is going to fund this expanded sys-tem? The seed money to developMATOS came from the Atlantic StatesMarine Fisheries Commission, a state

compact that works to manage fisheriessustainably. The other partners includethe National Oceanic and AtmosphericAdministration (NOAA) ChesapeakeBay Office, the Smithsonian Institution,and the Mid-Atlantic RegionalAssociation Coastal Ocean ObservingSystem (MARACOOS ). The observingsystem is one of 11 regional organiza-tions in the national Integrated OceanObserving System (IOOS), a NOAA-ledpartnership of federal agencies, universi-ties, and other organizations. Tracking fish and collecting the dataare time consuming and difficult, andthat’s where MATOS would help. Theprocess starts when an acoustic receiverin the water picks up a ping and storesthe time of detection and the uniqueidentifying code of the tag that emittedit. This allows a researcher like Secor torecognize “his” fish. It’s like the way theE-ZPass electronic toll systems know todebit your account for a toll by detectingthat little transponder stuck behind thewindshield.

Every few months, fish taggers go outin the field to visit their receivers anddownload the data via a Bluetooth con-nection. This is where it gets compli-cated: the receivers pick up pings fromany tagged fish that passes by — not justthose tagged by the owner of a particularreceiver. So when Secor and O’Briendownload from their receivers, they alsocapture fish “owned” by other taggers. Taggers in the Mid-Atlantic regionhave developed a way to make sureeveryone gets back their fish. It’s a work-able but not entirely user-friendly sharingsystem called the Atlantic CooperativeTelemetry (ACT) network, comprisingmarine animal taggers from Maine toFlorida. Rule One of the ACT network is thatif you tag a fish, any data that resultsbelongs to you. But getting your fish databack if someone else’s receiver detects itis not always quick and easy. AfterO’Brien downloads the files fromreceivers and takes it back to the lab, hehas to look up each “foreign” tag and its

Volume 15, Number 2 • 11

A network of underwater microphones was installed inthe Chesapeake Bay by David Secor and his partners withMaryland Department of Natural Resources. These acousticreceivers listen for the telltale sounds sent by transmitters (ortags) implanted in fish such as striped bass and sturgeon.Receivers are often placed in narrow waterways to be in broad-cast range of tagged fish passing nearby. MAP, COURTESY OF MIKE

O’BRIEN/CHESAPEAKE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY; ILLUSTRATION (ABOVE), RECREATED BY

SANDY RODGERS FROM THE ORIGINAL BY THE FISHERIES CONSERVATION FOUNDATION,

EXCEPT THE STRIPED BASS , WHICH IS BY DUANE RAVER

The TAG is implanted into striped bassand emits a signal

The RECEIVER detects the signal ofthe tag and records when a tagged

striped bass swims nearby

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12 • Chesapeake Quarterly

owner on an online spreadsheet thatACT members have access to on GoogleDocs. He emails the person and says in somany words, “I detected your fish. ShouldI send you the files?” If the tag code is not on the ACT list,O’Brien has to email the data to Vemco, aCanadian company that makes the tagsand receivers. They try to identify theowner and forward the contact informa-tion of whoever has the data. Moreemails ensue. Delays of months, known as“tag lag,” are not unusual.

A Better Way?

Retired NOAA oceanographer DougWilson came up with the basic idea forMATOS and has been working since2009 to allow taggers to transition froman informal sharing to a structured “data-base-driven” system. At the time, Wilsonwas building the Chesapeake BayInterpretive Buoy System for the NOAAChesapeake Bay Office, and had placedacoustic fish-tag receivers on the buoysthat could report hearing a fish pingerimmediately via its connection to theinternet. “But we lacked a way to imme-diately identify the tag owners to providethem with the information,” he says. Wilson’s goal is to help fish taggersmaintain precise control over their data.

His solution is to allow taggers to assign“permissions” to the digital filesuploaded to the system from acousticreceivers. It will work this way: A taggerestablishes an account on the MATOSdatabase. He or she would enter theidentifying code of their pingers into thesystem and designate who would haveaccess to any detections of that tag —colleagues they are working with on aproject, for example. When anyoneuploads receiver data, the time, place, anddate of all the fish detected are thenavailable in the database to those withpermission to see them. “It’s sort of like fish telemetryFacebook,” O’Brien says. “If I am work-ing with you, I want you to see my datawhen I upload it.” In other words, if you“friend” someone in MATOS, that per-son gets to see your fish; if not, the tag-gers can see only their own fish. MATOS is still a demonstration proj-ect, overseen by MARACOOS, the Mid-Atlantic arm of IOOS. A prototype ver-sion of the tool is under development bythe private company, RPS AppliedScience Associates, that handles informa-tion systems for MARACOOS. Secorand O’Brien are working with the tool’sdevelopers to test the prototype, usingsome of their own data.

The winds appear to beblowing in the direction ofdatabase-driven tools likeMATOS, according toMatthew Ogburn, who hasworked with colleagues atthe Virginia Institute ofMarine Science to trackcownose rays as far south asFlorida. Tagging can alsoprovide insights into thelocation of critical habitatsand breeding areas. Theshellfish-munching raysmate and give birth to pupsin the Chesapeake in thesummer, animal behaviorsthat acoustic tagging allowsresearchers to understand.

MATOS would also makeit easier to combine fish-

tracking data with information aboutwater conditions collected by oceano-graphic observing systems. By doing this,fish biologists could gain insight into whyfish and other marine animals do whatthey do. That opens the possibility of pre-dicting where the fish are, a forecastwhich can inform policy decisions. Forexample, knowing fish migration routeswould help planners choose sites for off-shore wind farms with the least potentialto impact marine animals. The same goesfor planning shipping routes to protectmarine mammals. “If you are interested in preventingwhales from being struck by ships, or ifyou are trying to find out what the bestnursery habitat is for a species, or tryingto look at migration routes, or howdistribution of species will shift becauseof climate change, that’s the real power ofsome of this tracking data,” Ogburn says. But first, the makers of MATOS willneed to entice the diverse mix of animaltagging researchers into a centralizedsystem. The payoffs will be worth it, saysCarl Gouldman, deputy director of theNOAA IOOS program office in SilverSpring, Maryland. “It’s going to bemessy and complicated, but we’re goingto do it.” — pendick@mdsg.umd.edu

A range of marine animal trackingdevices (above) called pingers or tags canbe implanted in living fish, as fisheriesscientist David Secor (left) has often donewith striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay. Thetags identify the individual fish, allowingscientists to track them as they move throughtheir underwater environment. Some stripersare migrators: they breed, feed, and leave theChesapeake for the Atlantic Ocean.PHOTOGRAPHS, COURTESY OF VEMCO (ABOVE) AND DAVID

SECOR (LEFT)

rents, which then go to a computermodel that predicts the speed anddirection of currents in the nearfuture. Those predictions go to a dataserver in South Kingstown, RhodeIsland, where SAROPS controllerscan access them at any time.

At regional Coast Guard head -quarters along the Mid-Atlantic,SAROPS controllers draw on thepredicted currents and other infor-mation to generate search patternson maps to guide helicopters, planes,and ships. Using information oncurrents from coastal radar helps tonarrow the search area, thus increas-ing the odds of finding a person orvessel lost at sea.

When John Aldridge was reportedmissing off Long Island, SAROPScontrollers went to work at the NewHaven office. Whenever a boater isreported missing in the Chesapeake,SAROPS controllers in Baltimore,Maryland, or Hampton Roads,Virginia, start downloading data.Around the country, SAROPSoperators cover 22 million squaremiles of territory by drawing onother regional radar networks similarto the one managed by Rutgers.

Coast Guard statistics show that itssearch-and-rescue operations save about10 people per day, but they lose three.Thankfully, John Aldridge wasn’t one ofthem. Nearly 12 hours after he fell over-board, a Coast Guard helicopter foundhim. Real-time radar current data fromMARACOOS helped SAROPS con-trollers put their rescue helicopter in theright ocean neighborhood, where asharp-eyed pilot flying back to CapeCod was able to spot the lobsterman ashe floated in the ocean below, hangingbetween two roped-together buoys, stillhoping for an unlikely rescue. — pendick@mdsg.umd.edu

Volume 15, Number 2 • 13

W hen John Aldridge felloff his lobster boat inthe middle of the night

off Long Island, his chances of res-cue seemed somewhere short of nil.He had no life preserver, his boatwas motoring steadily away fromhim, and his partner, asleep in theforward cabin, would not stir fromhis bunk for another three hours.When he did wake up, he called theCoast Guard. The call came in to the U.S.Coast Guard office in New Haven,where personnel responsible forsearch and rescue in Long IslandSound and coastal Connecticutturned to a computer program calledSAROPS — the Search and RescueOptimal Planning System. This soft-ware tool crunches data — like thelast known location of a person orship lost at sea, the type of vessel,wind direction, and ocean currents— and uses all this information topredict the area where rescuers aremost likely to find a drifting fisher-man like Aldridge. In the Mid-Atlantic region,SAROPS draws on 41 radars alongthe coast that measure ocean surfacecurrents. The radar network is operatedby the Mid-Atlantic Regional AssociationCoastal Ocean Observing System, orMARACOOS, based at RutgersUniversity. It’s part of the nation wideIntegrated Ocean Observing Systemmanaged by the National Oceanic andAtmospheric Adminis tration and its fed-eral partners. Other U.S. coastal regionsalso have radars and ocean observingsystems that feed data to SAROPS. To contribute to SAROPS operationsin the Mid-Atlantic, Hugh Roarty, theRutgers scientist who manages the radarsystem, must keep enough of the 41radars up and running to provide infor-

mation on currents over more than100,000 square miles of ocean for at least80 percent of the time. To do that,Roarty coordinates the work of fourradar technicians from Massachusetts toVirginia. Roarty’s team worked hard to attainthat 80 percent goal. MARACOOS wasready in spring 2008 to deliver its radar“data product” to SAROPS. The CoastGuard system became fully operationalin May 2009. Here’s how it works: Antennae on theshore bounce signals off the ocean sur-face. Electronic gear converts the radarechoes into digital maps of surface cur-

On the beach at Loveladies, New Jersey (above, top),a radar antenna broadcasts microwaves more than 100 milesout to sea, probing the speed and direction of surfacecurrents . The information streams to the U.S. Coast Guard,which uses it to design search patterns (above) to find avessel or person lost at sea. PHOTOGRAPH, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY; MAP, U.S.

COAST GUARD

COASTAL RADAR TO THE RESCUEBy Daniel Pendick

E very month, biol-ogists in boatscruise along the

rivers and mainstem ofChesapeake Bay, stoppingat certain predeterminedsites to collect water sam-ples and take them backto a laboratory to measure nitrogen,phosphorus, and other nutrients. Later,researchers plug this boat-gathered datainto the computer models they use tostudy excess levels of nutrients in the Bay. But those monthly readings leavelarge data gaps in our view of the estuary— gaps that limit our ability to under-stand the causes of poor water qualityand how to improve it. Why are thosegaps a problem? Imagine trying to appre-ciate a symphony by listening to everytenth note. Some solutions may be coming to

help fill the gaps. Thissummer, prototypes ofnew high-tech nutrientsensors will start probingthe waters at three fieldtesting sites, including onein the Chesapeake.

The tests mark the cul-mination of a four-year effort to upgradescientists’ ability to monitor and under-stand nutrient pollution. A key player isthe Alliance for Coastal Technologies.This federally funded program is based atthe Chesapeake Biological Laboratory(CBL), part of the University ofMaryland Center for EnvironmentalScience. The alliance is a consortium ofresearch labs, resource managers, and pri-vate companies that work together todevelop and apply new tools to study andmonitor aquatic environments —

whether in streams and rivers, estuaries,or oceans. Among other things, thealliance conducts independent evaluationsof equipment, like the new nutrientsensors . In a series of laboratory tests and fieldtrials at the three sites, alliance scientistswill assess how well the sensors performover a wide range of water conditionsand nutrient levels. CBL is one of thefield sites where the prototypes will runthrough their paces for three months offthe lab’s 750-foot research pier. The sensors that meet the tough testcriteria could be a boon to scientists andnatural resource managers in the manylocations that struggle with nutrient pol-lution. When dissolved in water, nitrogenand phosphorus form chemicals such asnitrate and phosphate. Plants need thesenutrients to thrive. But excessive nutrientlevels fuel algae overgrowth or blooms,which lead to large and persistent oxy-gen-starved “dead zones” in theChesapeake. A better way to track the nutrients ispart of the solution. And that’s why theChallenging Nutrients Coalition, madeup of federal agencies and the alliance,launched a technological I-dare-youcalled the Nutrient Sensor Challenge. Thecoalition thinks the key first step to rein-ing in nutrient pollution is creating a newgeneration of affordable, compact, easy-to-use sensors that can detect and measurenitrogen and phosphorus in a variety ofenvironments. If this new hardware meetsa critical price point — less than $5,000— the number of nutrient sensors inoperation could rise exponentially. More sensors mean more data, both tofeed the computer models scientists use tostudy nutrient pollution and to informmanagement decisions. Better and cheapernutrient sensors could also be a boon towastewater treatment plants, aquacultureoperations, and hydroponic farms. That is, if the new sensors can passmuster in tough laboratory and field tests.The project’s tester-in-chief is MarioTamburri, a marine biologist and experton aquatic instruments who directs theAlliance for Coastal Technologies. The

14 • Chesapeake Quarterly

BETTER TOOLS FORCLEANER WATER

The race is on toinvent the technologyneeded to solve thenation’s nutrientpollution problem

By Daniel Pendick

Nutrient Sensor Challenge is unlike any-thing the alliance has done before, andTamburri is excited. “We are transform-ing the way nutrients are monitored,” hesays.

The Road to the CBL Pier

The Nutrient Sensor Challenge grew outof an effort at the White House to iden-tify important national problems thatcould be solved with technology chal-lenges. To spur new solutions to worthyproblems of broad public interest, tech-nology challenges offer an incentive —typically a cash prize. The White House’s Office of Scienceand Technology Policy (OSTP) asked foradvice from its staff experts and others infederal agencies. “They said that nutrientmanagement and pollution is a hugeproblem, and we are just not solving it,”says Bruce Rodan, OSTP’s assistant direc-tor for environmental health. But what was the solution? To findout, the coalition held another meeting atthe White House with experts on nutri-ent management. They said that progressin solving the nutrient problem wouldrequire better tools to measure nutrientsand more data — collected more often, inmany more locations. In most nutrient monitoring, someonecollects water samples and carts themback to a lab for analysis. This sharply lim-its the frequency and coverage of thesampling, creating blind spots. “You missthings like the true range — the truehighs, the true lows,” Tamburri says. “Itdoesn’t tell you the total amount of thenutrients present because you don’t haveenough samples to get a good estimate.” To fix that, scientists could try puttingout more of the automated nutrient sen-sors currently on the market. But thesedevices can be difficult to operate and areexpensive, costing $15,000 to $25,000.The coalition decided to sponsor a grandchallenge to develop more affordable andeasy-to-use nutrient sensors. That’s when the Alliance for CoastalTechnologies got involved. It was tappedfor its expertise in testing aquatic sensorsand its connections to equipment manu-

facturers and academic labs.The alliance could help tofigure out the key capabilitiesthat the sensors needed tohave to advance nutrientmonitoring. How sensitiveand precise would they needto be? What nutrients shouldthey measure? And howcheap would they need to beto help clean up America’snutrient pollution problem? Through a series of sur-veys, studies, workshops,webinars, and numerousphone calls and conversa-tions, alliance and coalitionexperts discovered that adiverse range of professionscould benefit from new sen-sors. Researchers and naturalresource managers wantedthem, but so did citizen sci-entists, environmental non-profits, wastewater-treatment-facility engineers, and evenhydroponic-greenhouseoperators and farmers, whocould use them to fine-tunethe amounts of fertilizer theyapplied. The sensors should beable to measure either nitro-gen or phosphorus, or both,in a variety of settings —freshwater, estuary, andocean. They should keep good data flowingunder a range of temperatures anddepths, and be accurate and preciseenough to meet high scientific standards. They had to perform well in waterclouded with sediment or organic matter. They had to take measurements atleast every hour, but every minute ifneeded. Users wanted the ability to deploy thesensors in a variety of ways — handhelddevices, on floating buoys, at the edge ofthe water, and from boats. The sensors needed to keep workingon their own for at least three months —a tall order. That meant special design fea-

tures to combat biofouling, in whichdevices get overgrown with bacterialfilms, algae, seaweed, sponges, barnacles,and even shellfish. Biofouling causes sen-sors to either fail altogether or spit outbad data. And one more really important thing:the sensors needed to be affordable.Careful analysis showed that if the sensorscost less than $5,000 they would prolifer-ate, potentially changing what we knowabout nutrient pollution and how weknow it. The Challenging Nutrients Coalitionwas asking for a lot. In return, the com-panies that entered the challenge would

Volume 15, Number 2 • 15

In a competition to produce better sensors for measuringnutrient chemicals like nitrate and phosphate, the Alliance forCoastal Technologies (ACT) tests prototypes at field sites. Onesite is off a research pier at the mouth of the Patuxent River(above, top), where ACT scientists previously tested sensors forwater acidity. Another ACT field station is on a coral reef inHawaii (opposite page), shown with a submerged rack of sensorsunder test. The sensors that pass muster might become new prod-ucts, similar to the solar powered nitrate sensor (above) for meas-uring nitrates in farm soils. PHOTOGRAPHS, ALLIANCE FOR COASTAL

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gain an early foothold in a lucrative newmarket for nutrient sensors. An alliancemarket study determined that companiescould sell 24,000 to 30,000 sensors inthe United States alone in the first fiveyears, with total sales of $120 to $150million. The alliance was also providingfree lab and field testing of the sensorprototypes.

Start Your Sensors

Out of 29 companies or teams that ini-tially expressed potential interest in theNutrient Sensor Challenge in early 2015,five made it to the final testing phase in2016. Some of the devices are lap-sizedminiature chemistry labs; other instru-ments scan water samples with ultravioletlight to capture the spectral fingerprintof the nutrients. The entrants includedcompanies from England, Ireland, Italy,Canada, and one firm in the UnitedStates. To start the testing, the alliance willstage laboratory trials at ChesapeakeBiological Laboratory to subject the sen-sors to the wide range of temperatures,salinities, sediment and organic materiallevels, and nutrients levels they are likelyto encounter in actual use. That wouldtest for accuracy, precision, and range. Then the devices go to three alliancepartner field sites, representing a range oftypical freshwater, estuarine, and oceanenvironments.

The University of Michigan will testthe sensors in the freshwater conditionsof the Maumee River, which containsrelatively high levels of sediment andnutrients because of agricultural activityin that watershed. The Hawaii Institute of MarineBiology will test the sensors on a shallowreef in Oahu’s Kaneohe Bay, where theocean waters are relatively low innutrients . The sensors will also be dunked offthe research pier at CBL, where thebrackish waters contain moderate levelsof nutrients but where biofouling isextremely high. Three months in thisenvironment will show just how well theinstruments’ anti-biofouling featureswork.

At the end of 2016 or early in 2017,independent judges will award prizesidentifying what might be the next gen-eration of nutrient sensors.

How Will the Sensors Help?

Jeremy Testa is eager for the data thatwould flow from real-time sensors. TheCBL researcher uses computer models tostudy nutrients in the Chesapeake Bay.Are there data gaps he would like to fill?“Always, everywhere,” he says. For exam-ple, automated sensors could better char-acterize the sharp spikes in phosphorusin waterways when rainstorms wash thatnutrient off the land surface. Testa and other Chesapeake nutrientmodelers rely heavily on monthly boatsampling, but they rarely have data tobridge the gaps. “Having continuousnutrient sensors would be transformativefor us,” he says, “not just for modeling,but also for doing experiments andunderstanding natural variability.” New products from the NutrientSensor Challenge could start appearingin 2017. And more data could soon makea difference for a lot of scientists andmanagers working to reduce the impactsof nutrient pollution on the health ofChesapeake Bay. “All kinds of things aregoing to fundamentally change,” saysTamburri, “because we will have thetools to understand them.” — pendick@mdsg.umd.edu

Biologists on boats measure nutrients in theBay once or twice a month, but this leaves gapsin the record that real-time automated sensorscan fill and help to improve understanding andmanagement of nutrient pollution. PHOTOGRAPH,

COURTESY OF THE CHESAPEAKE BAY PROGRAM