About the Marine Environmental Real-time Observation System (MEROS)

The aim is to create networks of systems able to readily and rapidly collect, store and exchange environmental data and provide timely public access by end-users attempting to understand and model ecosystem behaviour.

In collaboration with private sector partners Cefas has developed a new generation of Smart Mooring Systems. These systems take high-frequency measurements of marine environmental data over extended periods of time. These data provide improved understanding of the physical and biogeochemical processes operating in the marine environment.

Following successful experimental deployment over 2 years to ensure reliability, and to produce a robust logistics and infrastructure support, Cefas is now using the SmartBuoy with spatial systems from other participating research groups in a series of pan-European collaborative deployment programmes.

Cefas has a number of research programmes running, each involving a series of deployments, grouped according to a particular location or timeframe. Each deployment group page describes the purpose of the particular series of deployments, the participants and instruments used. Data from each deployment is telemetered via interpretative software at Cefas for rapid access from this website.

Cefas offers integrated autonomous observational systems backed up by comprehensive scientific and technical services designed to improve understanding of the marine ecosystem and its response to natural, man-made and climatic change. Used in conjunction with standard survey techniques or as stand-alone systems, they permit users to make relevant observations of environmental processes of interest at appropriate spatial and temporal scales, both reliably and cost effectively.