SmartBay Observatory

The SmartBay cabled underwater observatory has been operational since August 2015 in the ocean energy test site at Spiddal in Galway Bay, Ireland. The observatory includes a fiber optic data and power cable and a sub-sea sensor hosting platform (node). The sub-sea sensor hosting platform includes interfaces (ports) capable of providing electrical power and 2-way optical or electrical (Serial or Ethernet) high speed communications to scientific instruments from R&D projects or sensor developers; the platform includes a set of permanently deployed instruments (CTD, DO2, Turb./Fluor., ADCP, HDTV, hydrophone, PC02).

Data relating to the marine environment at the observatory site are now being transferred in real-time from the Galway Bay observatory to the Marine Institute headquarters and onwards onto the internet. The data currently includes a live video stream, the depth of the observatory node, the sea temperature and salinity, and estimates of the chlorophyll and turbidity levels in the water which give an indication of the volume of phytoplankton and other particles, such as sediment, in the water.

The data platform for the SmartBay Observatory has been built using Big Data technology, so that when new instruments are plugged into the cable system it is straightforward to include the new data streams into the system. The real-time underwater video footage and all the data from the various sensors and instruments is continuously refreshed and displayed on the observatory web portal which can be accessed using the Google Chrome web browser at: http://smartbay.marine.ie.

The SmartBay Observatory is part of EirOOS - the Irish Ocean Observing System: A component of the European Ocean Observing System (EOOS) and is supported by Sustainable Energy Authority Ireland (SEAI) and by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) as part of a SFI Research Infrastructure Award under Grant number 12/RI/2331