The Boat Powers Its Nitrate Sensor

This week, the lab spent three days at sea (at river/on river), as we conducted our second water quality sampling trip. This time, we brought the BlueBoat with its integrated power system and we successfully collected nitrate data from the boat without the nitrate sensor being attached to external power. Instead, our engineering team attached the nitrate sensor to the motherboard of the boat and used the boat's batteries to power the sensor. This meant that we could park our larger boat at the center of each water body, put the BlueBoat in the water, and let it pilot its path while we conducted the vertical profile and collected water samples. We did keep a close eye on the BlueBoat, though, as we saw heavy boating activity at some sample sights and we needed to avoid crab traps, large parked vessels, and [suspected] naval operations. 

Pictured is one of my favorite treks from our trip. Here, the BlueBoat is piloting across the East Pascagoula River in a portion of the waterway that has some major vessels docked on either side. We had to manually pilot the boat away from the vessels so that its horizontal path would not cause the BlueBoat to approach the vessels; it can be hard to discern what the boat is doing from afar and we did not want to worry the vessels or their captains/crew. While on this path, we got to see dolphins on the edges of this channel and a few pelicans were quite curious about our research. 

So what's next for the BlueBoat? Well, she now has all the major features we need but we are hoping to make small adjustments to her current build to improve her handling and safety. Specifically, we are aiming to make her easier to transport to and from the field and we expect to add a handle or a system that makes it easier to put the boat in the water and retrieve the boat from the water. My next step is to download all three sets of data--the nitrate data, the water quality sensor data, and the GPS data from the boat--and align the nitrate and water quality with exact coordinates along the BlueBoat flight paths, a task for next week. Stay tuned for more fun from the De Mutsert lab and our water quality sampling adventures.

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