Marine Ecosystem Observatories in the coastal waters of British Columbia 

Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Environment Canada jointly maintain a network of weather buoys in the coastal and offshore waters of British Columbia. Values of wind speed and direction, air pressure and temperature, and wave height at the buoy locations, reported hourly via the GEOS satellite, are routinely used to improve marine weather forecasting.

Over the last 10 years, there has been increasing evidence that the state of the ocean affects all aspects of marine productivity, from phytoplankton (the "grass of the sea"), through zooplankton, to commercially important marine fish stocks such as salmon. The existing weather buoys offer a geographically widespread network for observing the state of B.C.'s coastal ocean and any changes in marine ecosystems resulting from changing climate. Thus the two departments are now working towards the concept of "Marine Ecosystem ObServatories" (MEOS) , adding new instruments to the buoys for measurements of ocean water properties and key biological fields.

The first MEOS buoy has been placed in Saanich Inlet, near the Institute of Ocean Sciences, with easy access for testing and calibrating new sensors and methods. As resources become available, the instruments tested in Saanich Inlet may be added to other buoys in the existing AES/FOC network, or in other specialized locations such as Marine Protected Areas. 

On February 20 2001 the Saanich Inlet buoy was re-deployed on Halibut Bank, and a new buoy was moored in Saanich Inlet at a slightly different location in deeper water.

Note: AES/DFO ecobuoys are experimental installations. Real-time data is unvalidated.

Funding for the MEOS project has been provided by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

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