Red tides, temperature changes, pollutants and any sudden vagaries in the Gulf Stream can now be measured at sea by two coastal monitoring buoys which have been deployed off the south-west coast.
The remote-sensing data-gathering buoys were "launched" on land by the Minister for the Marine and Natural Resources, Dr Woods, in Co Cork yesterday, and will be put in place in Bantry Bay and off Fastnet Rock over the weekend by the State marine research vessel, Celtic Voyager.
The Integrated Coastal Analysis and Monitoring System (ICAMS), as the buoys are officially called, will support an array of scientific instruments. They will collect and monitor data on sea temperature, currents, fluorescence, light penetration, organic matter activity and wind speed and direction.
The information will be transmitted to the Marine Institute's data centre every hour. The buoys will make use of an Irish-designed data-acquisition system known as Flexidata, which was developed by a Dublin company, Marine Informatics Ltd.
The data will prove invaluable to the aquaculture and fishing industries, coastal administrators, regulatory groups, engineers and researchers, according to the Marine Institute. The aim is to develop a complete coastal water monitoring system which can give early warnings of, for instance, algal blooms.
The Minister emphasised that ICAMS is linked to Ireland's marine research partnership with the US, initiated during President Clinton's first visit.
The project is supported by the EU programme on environment and climate.
