A round 1.4m yellow buoy has been deployed in Little Pioneer Bay, Orpheus Island, just off the research station in the central part of the Great Barrier Reef.
The buoy is configured as a sensor-float with a Campbell Scientific logger, a spread-spectrum radio for communicating with the base station (located near the Research Station) a surface mounted (60cm under the water surface) thermistor and an inductive modem to support a range of inductive sensors, initialy this will be a SeaBird SBE39 measuring temperature and pressure (depth).
The float is moored at the entrance to Little Pioneer Bay, just deep of the reef front and will be used to measure the water entering the bay with particular interest in warm water pushing up into the bay. The data will support work being done in the bay by James Cook University researchers.
The unit will be serviced every six months and will be used in the future for attaching new sets of sensors.