Bouy Facility
The Bowdoin Buoy Facility allows continuous monitoring of Harpswell Sound, a water body with significant economic resources (fisheries, tourism), a rapid development of surrounding watershed, potentially problematic circulation characteristics, and recurrent annual harmful algal blooms. Deployment of the oceanographic sensing buoy provides 1) reliable long-term, near-continuous data on background conditions and unusual events of the coastal site, 2) real-time indication of events that would be sampled or studied with ancillary research based at the existing marine research station at Bowdoin College’s Coastal Studies Center, and 3) an important and currently neglected coastal component of the Gulf of Maine monitoring program, GoMOOS. The data reported by the oceanographic sensing buoy will also support a large user group of researchers from several institutions throughout the state of Maine and New England region, who have pledged participation in ancillary research efforts.
