Marine monitoring
Monitoring the health of our seas
The shelf-seas are the most biologically productive regions of the oceans, they are also those under most immediate threat through over fishing, pollution and eutrophication. There is therefore a continuing need to monitor the marine environment so that we can measure and understand man made changes, against a background of natural variation.
The implications are highly practical, for they influence the technical and policy aspects of pollution control and remediation. They also help to inform public opinion. It is therefore essential that the monitoring carried out is soundly based in science, is well targeted to obtain the most from the resources available and is responsive to new needs and priorities as they arise. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) plays a major role in supporting these monitoring programmes and in interpreting their outputs for national and international policy, regulations and standards.
During the previous decade, monitoring of the offshore and coastal seas around England and Wales has been carried out at fixed estuarine and coastal sites and using research vessels during annual winter and summer surveys. Although providing good spatial coverage, the sampling frequency is unable to resolve temporal variability adequately for current and future purposes. Against this background, Cefas has developed new generation of Marine Observations Systems and technologies. These include a suite of automated in situ instrumentation capable of deployment at a mooring for monitoring a range of physicochemical and environmental variables.
The result is the UK-leading Cefas SmartBuoy network. This comprehensive system provides a robust way for readily and rapidly collecting, storing and exchanging environmental data. It also provides timely access for end-users attempting to understand and model ecosystem behaviour. The system is well proven, reliable and provides high frequency temporal data direct to this website via satellite telemetry.
Cefas' Marine Observations Systems form a key component of the following monitoring and research programmes:
