ST. MARY’S CITY, Md. – For the second consecutive year, the St. Mary’s River Watershed Association (SMRWA) has received Chesapeake Oyster Innovation Award funding to develop an inexpensive, automated solution to address the need for remote water quality monitoring at oyster restoration sites.
SMRWA is building prototype monitoring devices for about $900 each using makerspace components, with comparable commercial equipment selling for upwards of $20,000, according to the organization.
Last summer, the organization deployed and maintained five Bay Observation Boxes (BOBs), collecting preliminary data every fifteen minutes on parameters relevant to oyster health, including dissolved oxygen, salinity, pH, and water temperature.
SMRWA Executive Director Emma Green said, “The major Chesapeake Bay water quality monitoring efforts are focused on the main channel, but we need up-to-date information about our existing and potential oyster reef locations, which are in the tributaries of the Bay.”
The new $10,000 grant by the Chesapeake Oyster Alliance, in partnership with the Chesapeake Bay Trust, allows the organization to build and deploy three new Bay Observation Boxes (BOBs), bringing the total to eight in the St. Mary’s River. The grant also helps SMRWA to improve its data dashboard, analyze collected data, and upgrade sensors for improved accuracy.
SMRWA also partners with students and teacher Dorothy Birch at the Dr. James A. Forrest Career and Technology Center in Leonardtown, who built and deployed seven BOBs last year and will add three more to that total this year, sponsored by two Chesapeake Bay Trust Youth Environmental Education grants.
Green said, “Last year, we learned how to design and deploy the technology. This year, our focus will move to improving our sensors and ensuring our data is accurate. These are exciting challenges.”
Volunteer Norm O’Foran added, “The usual approach is to get in a kayak or boat and go out to the oyster reefs and take measurements manually. We’d try to get data once every two weeks – assuming we had enough volunteers and the weather cooperated. Now, our BOBs sit in the water and send the data to us all day, every day. Going forward, if we can confirm that those buoys are providing good, reliable data, maybe we’ll be able to retire our kayaks.”
This article really needs more links to get further information about the kits that are being deployed. Don’t forget that with PAX RIVER here we’re surrounded by incredibly talented engineers that volunteer in the community. Let us get a look at the details of the devices that are being deployed and we could possibly get them integrated enough so that the cost drops drastically.
I’m always trying to make devices I create smaller and more power efficient.