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by Natalie Springuel
images courtesy GoMOOS
Red, right, returning. All boaters know that. Vessels returning to port from the sea leave red buoys on the right and green buoys on the left. But what's a captain to do if the buoy is yellow?
The answer? Log onto http://www.gomoos.org and find the most up-to-date information about weather and ocean conditions anywhere in the Gulf of Maine. The yellow buoys are part of GoMOOS, the Gulf of Maine Ocean Observing System, and they'll help mariners navigate in a very different way than the familiar red and green buoys.
The federally funded GoMOOS is an integrated network of 10 computerized buoys, satellite imagery, and, eventually, four flag-pole-sized, land-based computerized antennae pairs. Together, when all three components are up and running, GoMOOS will become the eyes and ears of the Gulf of Maine, generating near-live information that anyone from fishermen to fish farmers can access and use anytime.
Buoys online
The buoys are the first stage of GoMOOS implementation. Deployed between July and September of this year, there are eight coastal/shelf buoys located along the coast from Cape Ann to Saint John, New Brunswick and one off southwest Nova Scotia. Also, one basin-style buoy was moored in Jordan Basin.
The 10 buoys are equipped with sensors capable of measuring air temperature, surface and bottom water temperature, water density, dissolved oxygen, salinity, wind speed and direction, wave height, ocean currents, fog density, nutrients in the water, right whale sounds, and more.
For fishermen, the most significant technologies - and benefits - attached to the buoys may be those that enable instant communication and transfer of data. University of Maine researchers led by Dr. Neal Pettigrew designed an innovative communication system that transmits data from instruments in the water via cable to a solar-powered, data-acquisition system on the buoy. Then that information is transmitted via digital cell phone and uploaded to the GoMOOS web site every hour, almost live.
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A page from the GoMOOS web site showing all the GoMOOS and affiliated buoys. By "pointing" to a buoy without clicking, data on the sustained and gusting wind speed and direction, surface and bottom water temperatures, and air temperature for the location are given.
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Real time, as the transmission speed is called, is what makes GoMOOS revolutionary. In addition to buoy reports, the system also includes satellite imagery and, eventually, the land antennae. Satellites are used to measure temperature, color (which relates to plankton abundance), and winds at the ocean surface. The paired antennae are for CODAR, a type of radar that can be used to produce hourly maps of surface currents.
Integration from these information sources means that GoMOOS will practically instantaneously transmit data that, historically, could have taken up to 18 months to access. Already, you can log onto the web site and find information - at most an hour or two old - about sea conditions at the buoy locations.
To find a particularly useful weather map on the GoMOOS web site, log onto the homepage (http://www.gomoos.org) and click through the following sequence of options: GoMOOS homepage > technical program > buoy program > latest buoy data MAP. Next, scroll over any of the buoys on the digital map, and watch as data on wind speed and direction, surface and bottom water temperatures, and surface currents, appear on the adjoining table.
Another option is to click on "Latest Buoy Data" right from the homepage.
NOAA weather
Why bother with the computer when you can get weather forecasts from NOAA weather radio?
Josie Quintrell, with the Maine Coastal Program of the State Planning Office, has been involved in the economic development aspect of GoMOOS from the beginning. She said the two are complementary, but also different. NOAA Weather Service has only two buoys in the Gulf of Maine, one off Boston and one off Portland. There are no weather buoys Downeast or in the Bay of Fundy.
GoMOOS, on the other hand, deployed 10 buoys all over the Gulf of Maine. According to Quintrell, the buoys were deliberately placed "where they would be the most useful to the most people."
The scale of information coming out of the regional GoMOOS buoys, particularly when combined with satellite imagery and computer modeling of wave heights, is much greater than that of the nationwide NOAA Weather Service.
Most importantly, said Quintrell, "GoMOOS is here, so we can be so much more responsive to the needs of the users."
Fishermen use
GoMOOS is incorporated as a nonprofit membership organization. Its board of directors includes, among others, representatives from the Maine Lobstermen's Association (MLA), Penobscot Bay and River Pilots Association, University of New Hampshire Sea Grant Program, Connor Bros. Ltd., Gulf of Maine Aquarium, New England Aquarium, and Federal Marine Terminals.
This board represents only some of the diverse marine interests that will benefit from GoMOOS.
Fishermen, safety officers, weather forecasters, researchers, oil spill recovery teams, military personnel Š these and many others in the marine trade could use real time data from the ocean. Search and rescue operations will more accurately predict current and drift of vessels that call in distress.
Lobstermen will have access to real-time changes in bottom temperatures, which may help them predict lobster movement or shedding.
MLA Associate Director Patrice Farrey fills the group's seat on the GMOOS board. She is enthusiastic about the potential for useful information fishermen might access through GoMOOS.
"There is so much potential in terms of making it safer and to better understand and manage fisheries resources," said Farrey. "That fishermen are at the table is exciting."
Although more and more fishermen have access to the Internet, they may not log on every day, and very few fishermen have web access on board.
"That doesn't mean they wouldn't find the GoMOOS information useful though," said Farrey. "They would love to know the status of the fog or currents in an area they are about to steam into."
These same lobstermen, she said, would like the information to be made available on the NOAA weather radio, something all fishermen tune into every day.
A short-term plan may lie in a traditional phone system, where users could call in and follow a menu of options to get information from the buoy of their choice.
In the meantime, Farrey encourages fishermen to log onto the GoMOOS web site and see it for themselves.
More than research
GoMOOS is governed by a cross section of agencies and institutions. These include the University of Maine; Maine State Planning Office; Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in Boothbay Harbor, ME; Island Institute in Rockland, ME; Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Woods Hole, MA; and Bedford Institute for Oceanography in Nova Scotia.
According to Philip Bogden, the chief executive officer of GoMOOS, the project originated, in part, from the Penobscot Bay Marine Resources Collaborative, a five-year research project initiated in 1996 to compile remote sensing information into a geographic information system - a system of overlaid digital maps that can translate substantial quantities of information.
The Pen Bay Project, as it is known, developed a predictive model for lobster settlement throughout the bay and looked at possible management applications of the model. In the process, the project paved the way for innovative oceanographic data gathering.
The Pen Bay Project is now coming to an end, however. As successful as it was, it is leaving a variety of questions in its wake such as: how do Gulf of Mainewide circulation patterns affect Penobscot Bay and vice versa? GoMOOS can help collect the data needed to answer such questions.
As the Pen Bay project progressed over the last five years, Philip Conkling, director of Island Institute, which manages the project, and Sandy Sage, director of the Bigelow Laboratory of Ocean Sciences, both wanted to think even bigger than Penobscot Bay, and they wanted to think on a long-term scale. They turned to Evan Richert, director of the Maine State Planning Office, who felt it was important to incorporate an economic development side to all this research.
Particularly in light of Gov. Angus King's popular "Jobs from the Sea" initiative during the late 1990s, GoMOOS needed to have much wider applications than academia.
Now, in 2001, Bogden agrees even more. "We don't need another research institute in Maine because we already have some of the best ones in the region," he said.
Instead, Bogden and the founders of GoMOOS envision a public service utility that can provide research quality data for both the private and public sector.
Although GoMOOS is only one part of a network of ocean-observing systems throughout North America, it has recently jumped into the national limelight, according to Bogden.
"That's because the GoMOOS mission is to develop useful products, to serve a wide diversity of user groups. That is the distinction between GoMOOS and every other ocean-observing system in the country," he said.
The US Office of Naval Research, which hopes GoMOOS will become a model for other ocean observing systems, funded the project's creation with $8 million dollars. US Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) was instrumental in acquiring this original funding and King has been an important advocate of GoMOOS from the beginning.
In October, US Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, announced that new authorizations in the National Defense Authorization Bill secured $1.7 million dollars for GoMOOS.
Although the bill still needs to pass the House, Collins said, "The exciting strides that this project has already made in the short time it has been up and running will present a compelling case for federal funding."
Current hits
In the meantime, anecdotal evidence trickles in that people are logging on already. Quintrell reported that Stellwagen Bank managers log on daily.
Maine Sea Grant Extension Associate Chris Bartlett said several Cobscook Bay area salmon aquaculture farmers have asked for the web address to use the information. The Penobscot Bay Pilots reportedly refer to the site, and even the Cat, the fast ferry that traverses the Bay of Fundy during the summer, is reported to have relied on GoMOOS information.
However, there have been requests to improve the site's organization. CEO Bogden agrees that, although the site is currently great for scientists, fishermen look at it and "it just looks like science."
That's why the GoMOOS board has approved a $300,000 web site and information development project dedicated to making oceanographic data usable.
GoMOOS is also spending $50,000 to contract an independent research company to initiate the first in a series of studies about what kind of information fishermen and others need. Fishermen, some computer users and some not, will be surveyed for how that information should be presented to make it immediately accessible, understandable, and useful. For example, a graph showing seasonal trends in bottom temperatures could be packed with information to predict where the fishing will be good, but a fisherman who has no Internet access or formal data training may find that graph useless.
Quintrell said the new and improved web display could be up as early as February 2002.
Starting this fall, Bogden, whose office is in Portland, will also be working out of the University of Maine Sea Grant office to develop the informational capacities of GoMOOS, in partnership with scientists such as UMaine's Neal Pettigrew.
"The long term goal is to make oceanographic data useful to anyone in the Gulf of Maine, from the oil industry to fishermen, from researchers to recreational boaters," Bogden said.
