A Partnership That Delivers for the Coasts

Unsafe for swimming. No fishing allowed. Shellfish beds closed. These are the last signs anyone wants to see on summer vacation, but they are important warnings that local water quality has changed. Tracking these shifts is critical to protecting public health, but the chameleon nature of estuary waters doesn’t make it easy. Salinity swings with the tide, temperature shifts by the hour, and biofouling (the accumulation of microbes, plants, or small animals) can cloud a sensor within days. 

Collecting high quality data in such conditions is the goal of the National Estuarine Research Reserve System-Wide Monitoring Program (NERRS SWMP), which serves more than 24,500 scientists, educators, resource managers, students, and others each year. At the heart of this work are reliable sensors that can perform consistently in extremely different conditions. Fortunately, in this regard, the NERRS has a longstanding partner in YSI, a division of Xylem. Over nearly 30 years, Reserves have collaborated with YSI to test and advance estuary monitoring technology, in the process creating a national standard for data collection and positioning the NERRS to track emerging and future water quality conditions in U.S. estuaries.

“Reserves put our sensors to the test in conditions that no laboratory can replicate,” says Randy Hadland, senior sales manager at Xylem. “They have to function in salt marshes, tidal creeks, and other habitats all around the coasts, and each brings its own unique set of conditions and challenges. It’s the ultimate stress test for new technology. Combined with the willingness of Reserve staff to communicate how the sensors are working it has made the System an invaluable development partner for the YSI brand.”

For example, biofouling was a persistent problem on conductivity sensors. (Conductivity is a reflection of water’s salinity or saltiness.) Feedback from Reserves helped YSI develop a wipeable sensor, extending how long it could be deployed. Reserve input also helped refine YSI’s Total Algae (TAL) sensor. Input from Reserves helped YSI engineers understand the value of combining chlorophyll and blue-green algae detection into a single unit and fine-tune its sensitivity to reduce interference from cloudy waters. TAL sensors are key to tracking harmful algal blooms (HABs).

This enhanced technology is a far cry from the mid 1990s, when the NERRS began looking for reliable continuous water quality monitoring equipment to support SWMP. Then, the brackish, biologically active, and highly variable nature of estuary waters were largely unserved. 

“In those days, few sensor companies dipped their toes in these waters, and YSI clearly stood out in a rigorous side-by-side assessment, ” says Dwayne Porter, director of the NERRS Centralized Data Management Office (CDMO). 

“With the leadership of Mike Lizotte [senior applications specialist] they went on to provide dedicated technical support and demonstrate a willingness to work hand-in-hand with Reserve staff. That laid the foundation for everything that followed.”

Keeping 300 monitoring stations running nearly 24/7 year round takes more than sound technology, it also requires skilled technicians, tested protocols, and a community of practice dedicated to learning from experience. YSI has been a longstanding partner to the NERRS in this regard as well. The Technicians’ Training Workshop (TTW), created in the mid-1990s, is an annual gathering of NERRS SWMP technicians and Xylem staff that has helped stabilize tenure—some technicians have been with Reserves for 20 years—and created a pipeline into research coordinator and manager roles across the System.

Central to the TTW is the troubleshooting in which technicians bring their experiences from the field for group discussions that engage first-year technicians and veterans. It’s a deceptively simple format that has produced real results: one such session identified a deployment flow issue in a dissolved oxygen sensor that led directly to a protocol fix.

“The standard operating procedures that emerged from this collaborative process, co-developed over the years by YSI’s Mike Lizotte and, more recently, Curt Butler, have become an industry benchmark,” says Melissa Ide, deputy director of the CDMO. 

“Florida’s Aquatic Preserves, for example, have adopted the NERRS SWMP protocol for their water quality monitoring, while the National Park Service and the Hudson River Estuarine Coastal Observing System have incorporated key components of it. NERRS SWMP is also an integral component of the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System. Interest has stretched even further, through engagement with water quality monitoring initiatives in India, Guam, and the Global Ocean Observing System.”

The next chapter of the NERRS/YSI partnership is already taking shape. Sea level monitoring and nutrient sensors are likely to be top priorities for both organizations over the next five to ten years, alongside continued work on HABs detection and, in the Southeast and the Gulf, Vibrio monitoring. On the innovation side, YSI is exploring more advanced anti-fouling systems and early-stage concepts for sensors that could learn to self-correct for interference from turbidity and organic matter—all ideas that trace their roots back to problems identified in the field by Reserve technicians.

“Three decades in, the relationship between YSI and NERRS is a model of what’s possible when a national public network and a private-sector innovator treat each other as true collaborators,” says Rebecca Roth, the executive director of the National Estuarine Research Reserve Association. “Reserves provide a living laboratory that is diverse, demanding, and real. YSI provides engineering and dedicated support. For coastal communities, that shows up in the form of accurate, high quality data they can use to protect people and places for swimming, fishing, harvesting shellfish, and so much more.”

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Xylem Technologies, YSI is a sponsor of the National Estuarine Research Reserve Association, which supports the work of the 30 National Estuarine Research Reserves around the coasts. Together, we are advancing estuarine science, stewardship, and community resilience.