Thanks to Beach Drive Blog for first word of this – a new buoy off Lincoln Park that’s gathering water-quality information around the clock. After seeing BDB’s story this afternoon, we asked the county if it had an announcement to share:

A new marine water quality monitoring buoy launched this week by King County will provide a wealth of data about water conditions on Puget Sound to scientists and the public alike.

At more than seven and a half feet in diameter and standing three feet tall with a seven-foot-tall mast, the yellow, donut-shaped buoy is firmly anchored in about 550 feet of water just less than half a mile off Point Williams in West Seattle. The buoy was deployed July 30th by staff with the King County Environmental Laboratory’s Field Science Unit.

The water quality monitoring system on the buoy consists of water temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, chlorophyll, nitrate and depth sensors that collect data measurements every 15 minutes.

These sensors are suspended about three feet below the buoy. Collected data are sent via a cell phone in near real-time to the County’s marine mooring webpage where the public can access the data, at green.kingcounty.gov/marine-buoy/default.aspx.

Water quality sensors and communications equipment were repurposed from a former monitoring system that stopped functioning about one year ago.

The new water quality monitoring system is one of four locations in Puget Sound that collect data every 15 minutes.

Collected data are integrated into the County’s monthly marine monitoring program in order to provide a more comprehensive picture of marine water quality dynamics.

The county link doesn’t seem to be working right now, but this one from the BDB report is – just click the green circle off West Seattle.