Rescuing the health of our oceans with novel optical sensor technology
According to UNESCO, the ocean absorbs about 26 % of the CO2 that is released into the atmosphere from human activities each year. When CO2 dissolves in seawater, carbonic acid is formed, leading to ocean acidification. This is problematic when we realise that our oceans cover more than 70 % of the earth’s surface and play a key role in the biogeochemical cycling of elements on our planet. Changes in ocean chemistry affect the behaviour of both calcifying and non-calcifying organisms. Marine ecosystems are at threat, as are the human populations relying on food from the ocean as their primary source of protein.
Under the sea solution needed
The impetus for the EU-funded AquapHOx project came from the 2014 Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE. This USD 2 million global competition challenged engineers, scientists and innovators to create pH sensor technology to affordably, accurately and efficiently measure ocean acidification. The parent company of AquapHOx, PyroScience, embarked on a year long experience in innovative lab sensor concepts to develop a flexible underwater solution supported by EU-SME-2 funding. They developed a new flexible optical sensor platform for ocean and coastal monitoring of O2, pH and temperature.
Monitoring the health of our oceans
“The AquapHOx technology enables accurate pH measurement and offers unmatched flexibility for standard O2 monitoring, ultra-fast O2 and temperature monitoring, or trace O2 detection,” explains marketing coordinator Andrea Wieland. This optical sensor is a revolutionary technology for underwater monitoring in the open ocean, the deep sea (down to 4 000 m) and coastal ecosystems. AquapHOx is compact and easy to operate with one channel compatible with diverse optical sensor formats for O2, pH and temperature. The sensor offers unmatched flexibility for multiple applications, including the most sensitive trace O2 measurements and sensitive measurements of ocean pH on the total scale with a neglectable impact of salinity. It can also provide the fastest O2 profiling and eddy covariance measurements, contactless read-out of incubations chambers, and profiling in sediments with high spatial resolution.
The benefits are many
PyroScience has introduced two product versions of AquapHOx technology to the market, single analyte shallow-water and multi analyte deep sea long-term loggers and real-time data transmitters. The products will be used for marine R&D, especially for deep sea oceanographic measurement campaigns to monitor ocean acidification and changing seawater temperatures. AquapHOx products can also be applied in the aquaculture and bioprocessing markets, life sciences, water quality, and even as medical applications. It is equally important to address the sociocultural factors caused by ocean acidification. The sensor can play a role in protecting the environment, raising environmental awareness, guaranteeing future food sources and allowing for sustainable coastal tourism practices. “This new AquapHOx underwater platform is ideally suited for global pH and O2 monitoring of the status of our oceans to understand and monitor climate change, biogeochemical cycles and the deep sea,” concludes Wieland.
Keywords
AquapHOx, ocean acidification, optical sensor, O2 monitoring, pH measurement, seawater temperature, underwater platform
