Biospar, A Buoy System For Acoustic Monitoring Of Biological Populations

Abstract

BIOSPAR is a free floating spar buoy that will use acoustic backscattering in collecting long term data on plankton populations. The system, which is being jointly developed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Applied Physics Laboratory of the University of Washington, will make acoustic measurements at 120 kHz and 420 kHz. The backscatter data will be processed to produce estimates of the plankton density and acoustic size distribution as a function of depth. The processed acoustic data are stored aboard the buoy on an optical disk. Subsets of the data can be transmittcd to shore using a satellite telemetry link.