Automatic temperature and depth profiling
Automatic data collection
The Moana TD sensor (named Mangōpare within the Moana project) has been developed as a key part of the Moana project
The Moana project is a multi-organisation New Zealand project that aims to vastly improve our understanding of coastal ocean circulation, connectivity and marine heatwaves, to provide information that supports sustainable growth of the seafood industry.
By attaching Moana TD sensors onto fishing gear, accurate and high resolution water temperature data can be collected extensively around New Zealand coastal waters.
Moana TD is currently under test on fishing vessels around New Zealand, and also internationally by the Berring Data Collective
How it works
Moana TD has been designed to work fully autonomously. Because of this, it can be integrated into existing commercial fishing operations without disrupting workflow. High precision data is effortlessly collected, and transmitted back to land based servers.
Moana TD intelligently monitors its operating environment, enabling it to reliably perform adaptive profile sampling and time series sampling schemes, under varying atmospheric and environmental conditions found in commercial fishing operations.
When Moana TD is submerged, profile temperature and depth data is collected at each 1 meter intervals from the surface down to 200m, and then every 4 meter intervals between 200m and 1000m (Moana TD 1000). If the depth doesn’t change significantly, for example, when deployed on a pot, time series data is collected. Moana TD features a wave filtering algorithm to prevent wave enduced depth change logging in shallow water.
On surfacing, Moana automatically offloads its data over Bluetooth, to the ZebraTech Deck Unit, or alternatively, to the ZebraTech app installed on a phone or tablet.
The ZebraTech Deck Unit is a solar powered stand alone device that automatically post processes Moana data to incorporate historical position stamping, and then uploads the data via the cellular network when available, or the vessels Wi-Fi network if available.
Technical Specifications
Physical
- Dimensions: 145mm long x 40mm diameter
Temperature specifications
- Temperature accuracy: Better than +/- 0.05 DegC
- Operating temperature range: -20 DegC to +35 DegC
- Temperature resolution: 0.001 DegC
- Temperature response rate: 1 second time constant
- Temperature probe: Titanium
Depth specifications
- Depth rating options: 200m, 1000m
- Accuracy: +/- 0.5% or less of full scale
- Resolution: 0.1m
- Over pressure: 150% of depth rating
- Pressure sensor: Ceramic
Operational
- Battery life: 2 years
- Calibration interval: 2 years
- Data storage capacity: 62,000 records
- Offload: ZebraTech solar powered Deck Unit
Mounting
- Potting
- Trawlers
- Long lining
- Nets
- Hand lining
- Diving
Deck Unit
The solar powered Deck Unit automatically offloads data from Moana when they surface, by Bluetooth.
The data is then post processed automatically to geo-position stamp each temperature and depth record, based on the Deck Unit archive of positions.
When the Deck Unit is within cellular coverage, it uploads the data files to a cloud server.
The Deck Unit is easy to mount, and once fitted, is fully automatic.
