Equipping smart coasts with marine water quality IoT sensors

Ocean acidification, the decrease in seawater pH as a result of increasing carbon dioxide, has been shown to be an important driver of oyster mortality in West Coast shellfisheries [1]. Yet carbon chemistry is only sparsely measured, especially relative to its high variability in coastal ecosystems, due to the complexity and cost of appropriate sensors and their maintenance. Worse, data are rarely communicated in real time to water quality or aquacultural managers. In the Agua Hedionda Lagoon (AHL) in Carlsbad, CA, researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and industry representatives from the Carlsbad Aquafarm have come together through a NOAA-facilitated project to alleviate this data shortage using a combination of cutting-edge research technology alongside off-the-shelf and easy-to-implement IoT communications packages.