New Monitoring Technologies at Ocean Business 2009

Highly advanced monitoring instrumentation will be the theme for YSI's participation at 'Ocean Business 2009' in Southampton, 31st March to 2nd April 2009. The company will demonstrate two revolutionary technologies; the 'EcoMapper' a remote control underwater vehicle for plotting water quality over wide areas and a multiparameter monitoring platform that has been developed as part of two EU funded research projects.

The 'EcoMapper' is a unique remote monitoring system which only requires one person to deploy and retrieve, has integrated water quality sensors, intuitive mission planning software, and weighs less than 21Kg. It is ideal for routine mapping of lakes, reservoirs, rivers, estuaries and near-coastal environments.

The EcoMapper dataset is also unique, offering extremely high spatial resolution of the key physicochemical water quality parameters in addition to chlorophyll and blue-green algae fluorometers, a depth sounder and optional side-scan sonar. Typical vehicle speeds are 2-4 knots and mission times can range up to 10 hours, providing detailed maps of water quality and bathymetry.

'WARMER' and 'InterRisk' are two research projects that, driven by the Water Framework Directive, have developed multiparameter water quality and flow data collection platforms that transmit data via satellite to improve risk management for accidental spills, algal blooms and other marine pollution events. YSI has been heavily involved in this work and will demonstrate the monitoring platform during a workshop organised by the two projects. The workshop will take place on 30th March immediately prior to the Ocean Business 2009 event - delegate places are limited to 75 and will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis to those that register by sending their contact details to europe@ysi.com .

YSI will also display a wide range of portable, fixed and buoy mounted water monitors on stand T2 at the Ocean Business event.