Meet "Kilroy," ORCA's Wireless Marine Ecosystem Monitor

INVENTING MARINE ECOSYSTEM MONITORS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

In May 2005, Dr. Edith “Edie” Widder, an internationally recognized marine biologist with a combined specialty in bioluminescence and technological innovation, and Keith J. Paglen, a corporate marketing executive with extensive experience in environmental communications and philanthropy, co-founded the Ocean Research & Conservation Association, Inc. (ORCA) in Ft. Pierce, FL.

In order to address marine habitat degradation on a national and international scale, we, as a society, need to bring marine ecosystem monitoring into the 21st century with ocean observing systems that supply continuous data rather than depending on sporadic sampling necessitated by hand collections. To address these challenges the OceanResearch & Conservation Association has developed a wireless network of low-cost sensors, called Kilroys, made accessible via the Internet using recently developed mapping tools designed to make the abstract obvious. Because the Kilroys are low-cost and wireless, we believe they will greatly accelerate coastal monitoring efforts otherwise hindered by the high costs, engineering challenges and bureaucratic roadblocks associated with cabled systems.

ORCA’s low-cost marine ecosystem monitor, called “Kilroy,” is designed to work in vast network reporting data 24 hours a day, to reverse the downward trend in marine ecosystem health. ORCA has developed the world’s first marine ecosystem water quality monitoring

 ORCA will deploy Kilroy in the ocean’s coastal zones—where the brunt of human impact, coupled with the fragile nature of coastal resources, is creating exponentially damaging effects on ocean health through dramatic water quality degradation. We must begin to understand that water is habitat. We must begin to conserve our water habitat by seri¬ously employing smart conservation strategies—the “solutions” the NRDC and others have been developing for several decades—“solutions” we as a society are ignoring, because the data on which our nation’s entire water quality analysis system rests is sporadic and doesn’t identify the sources of pollution. Can there be societal agreement on conservation solutions when the source of the problem is in doubt? Is it any wonder our regulatory agencies and conservation watchdogs have so much difficulty implementing and enforcing water quality conservation action plans? 

ORCA’s Kilroy monitoring networks—the first of which is currently being deployed in Florida’s Indian River Lagoon—are designed to track environmental toxin producers (including red tides responsible for paralytic shellfish poisoning), invasive species, and watershed pollution threatening public health, fisheries, and other ocean resources.
Kilroy’s design leads directly to more effective watershed conservation action plans. Under our regulatory system, using laws already on the books, a scientifically accurate, legally defensible description of the causes of pollution will mandate a solution to the problem.
 

Learn more....

Read about Kilroy being installed...
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2009/feb/18/scientists-hoping-new-device-will...

http://www.teamorca.org/kilroyishere.htm