As water temperatures warm through the 70s and toward the 80s, summer boating season is in full swing here in the Chesapeake Bay. Seven CBIBS buoys are in the water and reporting meteorological and other data:
Our intention had been to add an eighth buoy to the system this summer. Unfortunately, we are hampered by limited part availability, and we do not currently have the equipment to deploy an eighth buoy.
Wave sensors will be returning soon. We had pulled the wave sensors from most buoys because the housing they sat in was not watertight (and it needed to be). We worked with the manufacturer, who designed and produced two new housings, which have been deployed at the Annapolis and York Spit locations to test them in the field. While they appear to have worked well, we will run additional quality assurance tests so we can be 100% certain that we can keep the expensive wave sensors protected. Once that is accomplished, more new housings will be produced and we’ll work toward reinstalling wave sensors on all buoys by midsummer.
We are also changing water-quality sensors this summer. We are replacing the old water-quality sensors with new, lower-maintenance sensors to provide more reliable water temperature and salinity data. Some parameters that CBIBS has previously tracked, such as turbidity, will no longer be available. Maintenance of the old-style sensors was very time consuming. We are diverting time and resources into a project to track dissolved oxygen throughout the water column at several sites in the Bay. Data will be available at this website later this year.