Coastal Services Center

Ocean observing systems are helping scientists learn more about the hidden underwater environment that so impacts our nation's coastal resources, from its shorelines to its fisheries. A New Jersey National Estuarine Research Reserve is sharing some of this scientific data with the public in ways that are benefiting everyone from surfers to middle-school students.

But the next challenge for staff at the Jacques Cousteau Reserve at Mullica River-Great Bay, says its manager Mike De Luca, is to put the vast amount of raw data scientists are acquiring about the ocean into a useful format for the coastal resource management community.

"The raw data is not that user friendly," De Luca explains. "There has to be an effort to improve data visualization and an effort to provide training to the coastal management community on how the data can be used in terms of decision making. That's the point we are right now with LEO-15."

Picture Perfect

LEO-15, or the Long-term Ecosystem Observatory at 15 meters depth, is a system of instruments three miles off the central coast of New Jersey that is within the boundary of the reserve. The prototype observatory was the first of its kind, and can instantly deliver data from the ocean depths over an electro-optic cable to a marine field station operated by the Rutgers University Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences. LEO-15 delivers data directly to the Internet via the marine field station, so anyone can access the information in real-time.

"The value of the cable is that it provides continuous power to all the samplers and sensors," De Luca explains. "Traditionally, it's been challenging to operate [scientific equipment] in certain sea states and conditions without a stable source of power. Here we have a stable source of full-time power 24 hours a day, 365 days a year."

The fiber-optic cable allows LEO-15 to transmit real-time video, sound, and data on water temperature, salinity, visibility, wave height and period, sediment transport, plankton blooms, and a variety of chemical characteristics. Two undersea vehicles, a meteorological tower, Doppler radar, and satellites round out the information sources the scientists use to produce a detailed picture of the ocean environment.

"You might envision that the satellite remote sensing provides us with a top-down look at the ocean and that LEO-15 helps us look from the bottom up," De Luca says. "Between these two capabilities we have been able to create an excellent 3-D picture of the ocean structure and its change over time."

Research to Real World

While LEO-15 was developed as an observatory to address "very specific research questions," De Luca says an observing system is now emerging that has the capability to provide real-time information on the inner continental shelf or inner coastal ocean environment that will be useful for the public and eventually coastal managers.

"The whole idea behind the observing system is to develop scientific information that will be useful in promoting coastal stewardship," he says. The reserve's first attempt at this has been the creation of a Web site that provides user-friendly information from LEO-15 for swimmers, surfers, beachgoers, and fishermen.

Maintained by the Rutgers Coastal Ocean Observation Lab (COOL), the COOLroom Web site went on-line in September 2001 and is averaging 75,000 hits a day. Near real-time information on the site includes ocean surface currents, wave heights, coastal weather, sea surface temperatures, and an upwelling index, which shows when cold water is surging to the ocean's surface.

Another area where the reserve is capitalizing on the data from LEO-15 is by enriching science education at the K through 12 level, De Luca says. "We're using it to make science education fun and challenging, and to enable students and educators to use and access the same tools that the science community is using."

One of the most successful programs, he says, brings state educators to the reserve for about a week during the summer to "work side-by-side" with the more than 200 scientists from all over the country who conduct research with the LEO-15 instruments. The educators then participate in a workshop to design related curricula, classroom activities, and Internet-based instruction modules.

"Activities that have been developed are not just limited to science classes," he says. "The educators are using this experience to enrich history, music, poetry, as well as science and math."

The program is currently open only to New Jersey teachers, but De Luca says they have plans to open it up to educators from around the country. Many of the activities that have been developed thus far are available on the COOLroom Web site.

De Luca notes that a series of new instructional modules for use on the Internet are being developed that will be posted on a new Web site known as the COOL Classroom, which is scheduled to be operational in late spring. Educators can pre-register for information at www.coolclassroom.org.

The next effort for the reserve is to make the data collected by the observing system useful for coastal managers in New York and New Jersey. To determine the type of products that could be best used by managers, the reserve staff plan on using information collected in a market analysis and needs assessment of coastal managers being conducted by the national reserve system as part of its coastal training initiative.

"We want to capitalize on the data stream coming from LEO-15 and make it more useful for the coastal management community," De Luca notes. There also are plans to conduct workshops for coastal managers to increase their skills in interpreting that data.

"Our initial attempts to provide very user-friendly data in near real-time for a couple of user groups has been very successful," De Luca says. "Our next step is to harness that technology to provide useful management products and services."

For more information on LEO-15, contact Mike De Luca at (732) 932-6555, ext. 512, or e-mail deluca@imcs.rutgers.edu. You may access selected data from LEO-15 at theCOOLroom.org.