Recent advances in coastal ocean pollution research and monitoring

Design of both real-time studies of oceanic discharges of potential pollutants such as sewage effluent, and long-term monitoring of same, are complicated by a number of factors. These factors include lack of knowledge of the space and time distribution of the discharge plume, proper placement sites for sample gathering, and lack of knowledge of the space-time distribution of ‘‘interfering’’ plumes (plumes from sources other than the discharge plume under study). Progress has been made in the development of ‘‘integrated sensor suites’’ which produce data with substantial synergistic benefits. Ocean acoustics plays a key role in integrated sensor suite data unification. In a recent study in the coastal waters off San Juan, Puerto Rico, the ability of acoustics systems to view essentially the complete oceanic water enabled a connection to be made between salinity, temperature, and turbidity measurements gathered in the upper 5 m in the water column to a specific port of a sewage effluent diffuser. Having established the ‘‘connectivity’’ of the distal field measurement to a specific port, a dilution value at the distal point could confidently be calculated. This example is but one of many of the synergies available from utilization of multiple sensor suites unified through acoustics.