Lucy Williams, a Research Assistant, and the research team has deployed a new data collection device on the Hurricane Island aquaculture site. Lowell Instruments’ Tilt Current Meter (TCM) is being used to collect water flow speed and direction data during a scallop spawning event on their experimental aquaculture farm.
Scallops broadcast spawn, meaning they send gametes (eggs and sperm) into the water for fertilization. There are many studies on what induces large-scale spawning events for scallops and these results can vary from location to location and year to year. Hurricane Island has been collecting data from their farm for three years regarding approximately when spawning occurs and possible environmental factors that induce spawning such as temperature and moon not been tested on site. The TCM was deployed on the customized anchor at the end of August until the end of October, a collection time chosen due to historical data about spawning events on the farm.
The following graph shows the TCM Data collected on Hurricane Island Aquaculture Site. The gray lines refer to exact data collected using a TCM meter. The blue solid line is a viewing aid to show trends in data, calculated with a generalized additive model. Red dotted line refers to the maximum speed calculated during sampling, 19.76 cm/s, which occurred at 2021-09-10 15:55:00 EDT.
For additional information and analysis please see the Hurricane Island Blog
Products Used
TCM-1
The TCM-1 Tilt Current Meter is ideal for measuring water velocity from inland to the edge of the continental shelf.