Meeting the Needs of Coastal Monitoring–Interview with Application Development Manager Brock Houston

The release of the seven-port Aqua TROLL 700 and 800 Multiparameter Sondes is of particular interest for coastal applications. We sat down with Brock Houston, In-Situ’s Application Development Manager for Coastal, to talk about how the addition of the Aqua TROLL 700 and 800 expands the possibilities for data collection in marine environments.

In-Situ: As an application development manager, what role do you have in developing new products?

Brock Houston: My role as an ADM is to help our internal sales team, our sales partners and our customers understand how our instruments fit into different applications and how they can be used to address challenges in the field.

For me, that means helping the team understand how new instruments meet the needs of the coastal space. For the Aqua TROLL 700 and 800 in particular, we did extensive testing in Florida, where I’m based, so I was also involved with that.

In-Situ: What were you looking for in the testing process?

Brock: Florida's water is very productive. It's warm here and that leads to a lot of biofouling. Growth like barnacles and oysters can cover sensors and make water quality and water level monitoring difficult. So, Florida is a good testing ground for new antifouling technology. We can see how the instruments perform in difficult conditions and try to mitigate environmental effects.

In-Situ: Based on your testing, how can customers expect the Aqua TROLL 700 and 800 to perform in coastal environments?

Brock: Something I was particularly excited to see was how well the antifouling technology prevented growth on the instrument and sensor faces. That’s a huge issue in any environment, but particularly in the coastal environment. We deployed it for a few months with an antifouling restrictor and between the wiper and the restrictor there was very little growth on the sensor faces.

Researchers responsible for coastal monitoring often have one- to two-month cycles between site visits. During that time, they need the sensor faces to stay clean–free of any growth that could affect their readings. The antifouling on the Aqua TROLL 700 and 800 means they can easily leave the sondes out there for one to two months and not worry about fouling. These instruments don’t require a lot of maintenance.

In-Situ: How do the Aqua TROLL 700 and 800 compare to earlier models?

Brock: They have the exact same user interface, and look and feel like the Aqua TROLL 500 and 600. They’re just larger platforms that allow for monitoring more parameters.

We have a lot of customers who are measuring what we call the “big five”: conductivity/temperature, pH, turbidity and dissolved oxygen. That’s a standard set of parameters used to understand the health of their water body.

Because of the rise of harmful algal blooms in particular, coastal researchers usually want the chlorophyll sensor and possibly the blue-green algae sensor in addition to the big five. Or they might want to look at chlorophyll and dissolved organic matter. Being able to add those extra two sensors is extremely valuable. It’s almost an industry standard at this point, to have the capacity for that many parameters in one instrument.

In-Situ: Coastal monitoring has been using six-sensor instruments for a while, correct? What sets ours apart?

Brock: Yeah, that's correct. There are two things that I think set us apart.

For any project, the sonde with all your sensors is expensive. Then you’ve got to buy an entire telemetry station around it and that’s expensive, too. We have VuLink, which as cellular telemetry goes, is low cost, easy to use and easy to set up, and that’s quite a game changer because it makes remote monitoring a lot more accessible.

Secondly, our instruments are really easy to use. People can set them up quickly and collect the data they need without decades of experience deploying sondes. So, VuLink and overall usability are huge value adds with our seven-port sonde.

In-Situ: The Aqua TROLL 800 also has internal logging capability. Can you speak to the benefits of that?

Brock: The Aqua TROLL 800  mainly gives you more flexibility and security. Most people will still connect it to some sort of telemetry–VuLink or their own telemetry station. The nice thing about the 800 is that when you connect it to external power and telemetry you also have a data-log and power backup that essentially gives you redundant data.

If something happens to your telemetry station and you're not getting data through it, your Aqua TROLL 800 will continue chugging along and collecting data and storing it.

In-Situ: What kind of interest or response are you seeing from customers?

Brock: The Aqua TROLL 700 and 800 are already getting some really good feedback from users of the 500 and 600. When they heard we were releasing a seven-port sonde their eyes went wide.

Much of ocean and coastal monitoring is run by university researchers or federal and state agencies, and researchers are very keen to get as much data as they possibly can. They want to collect and transmit data at a high frequency for as many parameters as they can measure. Those are the folks who are most excited to try it out.

We also have users who were deploying multiple Aqua TROLL 500s at the same depth. They were measuring the big five on one sonde and attaching fluorometers to the second one. But it was kind of a cumbersome setup, to use two different sondes, the cable splitter and all that. It’s a better experience to use the seven-port sonde and get all the data collocated on one instrument.

In-Situ: Why are these instruments particularly well-suited to HAB monitoring?

Brock: Harmful algal blooms are a global problem in both surface water and coastal areas, and they’re only increasing in frequency and severity. HABs are one of the biggest reasons people are excited about the new sondes. They want the algae sensor and the dissolved organic matter sensor because that way they can look at what's coming into a water body, if that’s going to cause an algae bloom and how that's going to potentially affect wildlife and human health.