Multi-Disciplinary Ocean Sensors for Environmental Analyses and Networks (MOSEAN)

The Multi-disciplinary Ocean Sensors for Environmental Analyses and Networks MOSEAN project has the long-term goal of developing and testing new technologies that will lead to increased observations that are essential for solving a variety of interdisciplinary oceanographic problems of societal importance. These include biogeochemical cycling, climate change effects, ocean pollution, harmful algal blooms HABs, ocean ecology, and underwater visibility. The collective MOSEAN sensors will be able to sample key variables that are vital to solve problems in nearshore to coastal to open ocean environments. The overall objective of MOSEAN is to produce new sensors that will be able to sample key variables that are vital to solve interdisciplinary oceanographic problems in virtually all ocean environments. To accomplish this objective, the MOSEAN partnership is developing, interfacing, testing, and demonstrating new interdisciplinary sensor suites. Measurements with emerging biological, chemical, and optical sensors are the primary focus of the study. The sensors and systems are being designed for use with a variety of autonomous, unattended sampling platforms including both stationary-type e.g., moorings, offshore platforms, and towers and mobile-type e.g., moored profilers, autonomous underwater vehicles AUVs, gliders, drifters, and profiling floats. The MOSEAN sensors and systems will be capable of measuring key chemical, biological, and optical variables to complement physical data suites on time scales as short as minutes and space scales down to a meter for periods on order of months and horizontal space scales on order of 100s of kilometers. The sensors are being designed with capabilities of real-time andor near real-time data telemetry.