United States
                       Environmental Protection
                       Agency	
   Office of Research and
   Development
   Washington DC 20460
EPA/620/R-01/001g
     October, 2001
                       Coastal  Communications
                 Ocean Response Coastal Analysis System (ORCAS)
                           ORD/NRL/NMOC/URI/U Cal-Santa Cruz/
                            WetLabs, Inc./SubChem Systems, Inc.
Background
Harmful algal blooms (red tides, brown tides, etc.) and hypoxic events (loss of dissolved oxygen) are
increasingly being observed in our coastal waters. Early detection and better measurement of these events are
needed to understand their causes and to potentially prevent their environmental consequences (e.g., fish kills,
beach closures, shellfish poisoning). The U.S. EPA's Office of Research and Development (ORD) is working in
partnership with other federal agencies (Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), and Naval Meteorology &
Oceanography Command (NMOC)), academic institutions (University of Rhode Island (URI) and University of
California, Santa Cruz) and private industry (WetLabs, Inc., and SubChem Systems, Inc.) to provide real-time,
high-resolution monitoring of multiple biological, physical, chemical, and optical measurements in coastal waters
in 3-dimensional space.  The Ocean Response Coastal Analysis System (ORCAS), a new system of autonomous,
moored, instrumented platforms called profilers will be tested to evaluate its ability to provide these real-time
measurements. If testing is successful,  you will be able, in the near future, to access a web site that reports
on environmental conditions in coastal waters as well as provides  "now"'casts and forecasts of harmful algal
blooms and hypoxia. The ORCAS project is  being conducted through the National Oceanographic Partnership
Program and an Interagency Agreement between the ORD National Health and Environmental Effects Research
Laboratory's (Sulf Ecology Division (£ED) and the Office of Naval Research.

Approach
In September of 2001, twenty-eight partner scientists visited (SED for the first field test of the ORCAS
profilers. The field demonstration effort was conducted aboard the University of Texas research vessel
Longhorn in the estuarine and marine waters around Pensacola, Florida. During this field demonstration,
equipment and systems evaluations were conducted on the deployment, performance and recovery of the
profilers, data communcation links, and data storage and visualization systems.
 ORCAS
 Profiler Array
Conceptual drawing showing the Ocean Response Coastal
Analysis System deployed as an array of multiple ORCAS
profilers.  The depicted array is comprised of seven autonomous
bottom-up Mini-profilers and one Maxi-profiler. The real-time
data transfer and profiler control is supported by a radio telemetry
system. The auxiliary sensor systems that will be deployed from
the ship include URFs high-resolution profiler, NRL's optical
profiling packages, EPA's fast repetition rate fluorometer
instrument, SubChem's nutrient profiler, and acoustic doppler
current profilers (ADCPs). A network of upward-looking ADCPs
will be placed on the bottom to provide a continuous time-series
of vertical current profiles over the horizontal scale of the array.
NAVY divers are depicted transiting the optical sensor array
during the planned diver visibility/vulnerability experiments.
Further Information
For further information, please contact: Rick Greene at the ORD National Health and Environmental Effects
Research Laboratory's Sulf Ecology Division at (850) 934-2497 or greene.rick@epa.gov; or Percy Donaghay at
the University of Rhode Island (401) 874-6944 or donaghay@gsosunl.gso.uri.edu.

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