MacArtney & Sea-Bird Supplies WQM Instruments to DHI
Ocean News
WQM sensor displaying long-term stability in biologically rich coastal waters
MacArtney has supplied a series of water quality monitor (WQM) instruments from Sea-Bird Scientific for monitoring and modelling project in the Kiel Canal, Northern Germany
The world’s busiest artificial waterway, the Kiel Canal, links the North Sea with the Baltic. The canal constitutes the safest, most convenient, shortest and cheapest shipping route between the two seas. Having been enlarged twice already, the Kiel Canal is now subject to a further enlargement which involves a monitoring and modelling project headed by the Danish Hydraulic Institute – Water and Environment (DHI) having ordered the WQMs.
WQMs are designed to deliver core biogeochemical water quality parameters in coastal ecosystems from a single, integrated package. The WQMs incorporate Sea-Bird Scientific's fluorometer-turbidity and CTD sensors, providing temperature, salinity, depth, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll fluorescence, turbidity and backscattering data.
The WQM sensors have the accuracy and precision to track subtle long-term changes in even the cleanest marine systems. By combining multiple active and passive anti-fouling features, the WQM assures this data quality in coastal and inshore regimes.
Successful operation
Extensive field trials have demonstrated the WQM's unprecedented long-term stability in biologically rich coastal waters. This is also the case with the WQM instruments delivered to DHI by MacArtney. The instruments have been operating submerged for about 8 weeks presenting very good results. Custom firmware enables an extended deployment period, and four external ECO-PAR™ sensors provide highly accurate measurements of PAR*. The WQM custom firmware enables continuous sampling for up to four hours. This is necessary due to the fact that they are monitoring in an area where clean-up materials are being dumped.
This is definitely a token of a long-standing working relationship between the orderer, DHI, the manufacturer, Sea-Bird Scientific, and MacArtney to join forces and combine our strengths with a view to providing the ultimate monitoring solution, states Hans-Jørgen Hansen, MacArtney Vice President of Sales & Marketing.
