NOAA awards Cordova institute $354,971 to rebuild Prince William Sound ocean profiler

A robotic instrument that tracks Prince William Sound's water runs on a control computer and battery nobody makes anymore, according to the federal award record. The Prince William Sound Science and Technology Institute in Cordova has a $354,971 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grant to replace both with modern parts. The one-year project grant began Thursday, Oct. 1, and runs through Sept. 30, 2027, according to the federal award record.

Neither manufacturer is still in business, and no comparable instrument is built anywhere today, the record says. Users include commercial and subsistence fishermen, shellfish and seaweed growers, Sound residents, state and federal fishery managers, and oil spill response planners who need measurements of water structure, how temperature and salinity layer from surface to depth, along the tanker route from the Valdez Marine Terminal.

The robotic float, deployed each spring in the middle of the Sound, measures temperature, salinity, oxygen, nutrients and plankton from 200 feet to the surface every two inches, Katrina Hoffman, the institute's president and CEO, said in 2018 written testimony to the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee.

The Georgia Institute of Technology, which receives part of the grant as a subrecipient, will lead the engineering: a control system built around a low-power microcontroller, with winch control tracking line and tension, two-way cellular communication, and an independent safety function that returns the instrument to depth if the software or radio link fails. Georgia Tech will also develop a rechargeable battery from commercially available cells, built in modules a technician can swap in the field, sized to roughly double the current endurance of 70 profiles per charge.

The two platforms being rebuilt are surplus from the National Science Foundation's Ocean Observatories Initiative, which is ending its profiling work.

Testing moves from bench to test tank to the water near the research center, where the instruments will profile several times per hour, with results checked against vessel samples.

Outcomes include two working replacement instruments, spare parts, and a permanently archived design package of drawings, parts lists, wiring and software. The record says that package would let other institutions build the instrument for the first time in a decade, "at a cost well below the original commercial price."