The National Institute of Standards and Technology, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and the University of Miami have collaborated to upgrade an ocean color observation system.
NIST said Tuesday the Marine Optical Buoy-Refresh initiative aims to update MOBY to ensure that the autonomous optical buoy provides more accurate satellite measurements of sunlight’s colors or wavelengths.
The team will replace the ocean color sensor’s aging hardware with a new optical system, a control system and support structures to eliminate uncertainties in the measurements.
The optical system will include a spectrograph that can simultaneously measure sunlight at three different depth intervals.
MOBY consists of an optical buoy that measures and records light and a mooring buoy that keeps the optical buoy moored off the coast of Lanai, Hawaii.
The first upgraded optical buoy was installed in late February 2022 and a second mooring buoy was deployed in January 2021.
