It is done. A first buoy prototype for the Beagle Channel Observatory is ready and on its way to the CADIC institute in Ushuaia. It took our colleagues from the IADO institute in Bahía Blanca (Argentina) several weeks to assemble the buoy and to equip it with first sensors and probes. The idea is that, when the buoy is released to the Beagle Channel in late August, it will measure parameters such as air temperature, wind speed, wave height, water temperature, conductivity (and with that the salinity) and suspended solids within the water.

The buoy is equipped with a solar panel and - for emergencies - a battery. The centre piece of the buoy, however, is the data logger and the modem (GPRS). It coordinates and records all the measurements. Then, at regular intervals (e.g. every 5 minutes), a wireless connection is established and all recorded data sent out to the institute involved in Argentina (CADIC and IADO) but also to AWI in Bremerhaven. As soon as the data connection is established (in August) the data will be processed by the AWI data portal and made available on our DynAMo homepage. This will allow everybody at any given time to access the "near-realtime" data sent by the buoy in Beagle Channel.