Expendable Oceanographic Mooring (XMOOR).

An expendable, self-deploying mooring XMOOR for shallow water applications has been developed to address Navy requirements for environmental monitoring. The project has been conducted jointly between the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Naval Research Laboratory at Stennis, MS. WHOI has taken the lead on the mechanical design of the system while NRL has developed the electronics. Eight prototype XMOOR systems have been built. They are designed for water depths between 10 and 100m, for deployments of up to 3-months duration, and for automatic deployment. Their sensor suite includes barometric pressure, air temperature, water temperature at up to 25 levels, and conductivity and pressure at up to 3 levels. Data telemetry is accomplished via the Argos DOS and by line-of-sight VHF radio. The radio link provides two-way communications to allow for remote configuration of the data collection program. This report describes the XMOOR mechanical system. The data collection and telemetry systems are described separately in 1 and 2.