Application of subsea wireless technology to environmental monitoring

This paper will look at how wireless technology is being used to support and enable real time environmental monitoring techniques. The relative benefits of wired versus non wired systems will be considered and this will be illustrated with a real life example from a wireless environmental monitoring application. Of particular interest will be the Chesapeake Bay Interpretive Buoy System where wireless communication capability was designed into a surface buoy. Environmental monitoring data was transmitted wirelessly between a seabed sensor and a surface buoy using subsea wireless technology. The Chesapeake Bay Interpretive Buoy System (CBIBS) program, operated by the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office in Annapolis, MD, has a network of buoys to continuously monitor oceanographic and meteorological conditions in the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the United States. Data from the buoys, such as wind speed, temperature, and wave height could be used to inform and educate local users, who include mariners, kayakers and schools who can use the data to get a better understanding of their local marine environment and also provide long term trend data the about changes in the bay. The specific example for the presentation was located at Dominion Gooses Reef, one of twenty artificial reef sites in the Chesapeake Bay area. Construction materials from a local project were relocated to the bay, To create a new habitat for the area´s oyster population that has been devastated by decades of overharvest.