FIU’s CREST Center for Aquatic Chemistry and Environment is at the front lines of the critical water contamination issue in Biscayne Bay by creating solutions with cutting-edge technology.
On March 31, CREST CACHE sailed off from the FIU Biscayne Bay campus dock and launched their fifth Buoy into the ocean just South of North Bay Village. That is a critical area has been raising alarms for conditions throughout the Bay.
This solar-run device, CREST Buoy number four, monitors water quality with parameters that measure levels including pH, temperature, Chlorophyll, and dissolved oxygen, transmuting the data collected through cellular uplink every 15 minutes into CREST’s website for the public to view.
If one of the Buoys were to reveal levels nearing large-scale contamination, the CREST CACHE team would react to prevent it by finding the source of contamination and alerting the South Florida Water Management District to close or divert the waterways that are contaminating the bay and replace them with clean water that flows into the bay to mitigate contamination.
This Buoy completes CREST’S mission of launching a Buoy near each waterway that feeds into the North Bay between inland Haulover Beach and government cut, the southern end of Miami Beach. This project began after the 2020 devastating fish kill in Biscayne Bay, and is part of CREST’s mission to address the environmental contamination issues of South Florida, by detecting and analyzing water quality levels that lead to contamination.
