Technical Note: Animal-borne CTD-Satellite Relay Data Loggers for real-time oceanographic data collection

[摘要] The increasing need for continuous monitoring of the world oceans hasstimulated the development of a range of autonomous sampling platforms. Onenovel addition to these approaches is a small, relatively inexpensivedata-relaying device that can be deployed on marine mammals to providevertical oceanographic profiles throughout the upper 2000 m of the watercolumn. When an animal dives, the CTD-Satellite Relay Data Logger (CTD-SRDL)records vertical profiles of temperature, conductivity and pressure. Data arecompressed once the animal returns to the surface where it is located by, andrelays data to, the Argos satellite system. The technical challenges met inthe design of the CTD-SRDL are the maximising of energy efficiency andminimising size, whilst simultaneously maintaining the reliability of aninstrument that cannot be recovered and is required to survive its lifetimeattached to a marine mammal. The CTD-SRDLs record temperature and salinitywith an accuracy of better than 0.005 °C and 0.02 respectively.However, due to the limited availability of reference data, real-time datafrom remote places are often associated with slightly higher errors. Thepotential to collect large numbers of profiles cost-effectively makes datacollection using CTD-SRDL technology particularly beneficial in regions wheretraditional oceanographic measurements are scarce or even absent. Dependingon the CTD-SRDL configuration, it is possible to sample and transmithydrographic profiles on a daily basis, providing valuable and often uniqueinformation for a real-time ocean observing system.

[学科分类] 海洋学与技术