The Dominion Gooses Reef CBIBS buoy is the first location in the system to also include the capability to monitor water quality at the Bay bottom.
The buoy also includes a separate piece of equipment that is located under the buoy, seated on the seafloor. This water-quality sensor "talks" to the main Gooses Reef buoy as a radio transmission, and then this data is sent along to the CBIBS database along with the data from the main buoy. The CBIBS website, toll-free phone number, and smartphone app simply pull data from this database when it is requested.
As with any new application of technology, the CBIBS team needed to fine-tune a few things along the way. Determining just how far away from the main buoy the bottom sensor should be located was the first; tweaking the modem settings in the bottom sensor was the second. The team tackled the modem challenge on a chilly early December day—thanks to the field crew for standing up to the weather to make this great new feature operational.