Mass mortalities of cultivated organisms have occurred frequently in Korean coastal waters causing enormous losses to cultivating industry. The preventive measures require continuous observation of farm environment and real-time provision of data. However, line hanging aquaculture farm are generally located far from monitoring buoys and has limitations on installation of heavy equipments. Substituting battery pack for solar panels and miniaturizing size of buoy, newly developed system can be attached to long line hanging aquaculture farm. This system could deliver measured data to users in real-time and contribute to damage mitigation and prevention from mass mortalities as well as finding their causes.
The system was installed off Gijang and Yeongdeck in Korea, measuring and transmitting seawater temperature at the sea surface every 30 minutes. Short term variation of seawater temperature, less than one day, in Gijang from June to July 2009 corresponded tidal period of about 12 hours and long term variation seemed to be caused by cold water southeast coast of Korea, particularly northeast of Gijang. Seawater temperature differences between Gijang station and the other station that is about 500 m away from Gijang station were 1 ℃ on average. This fact indicates that it is need to be pay attention to use substitute data even if it is close to the station. Daily range of seawater temperature, one of crucial information to aquaculture, can be obtained from this system because temperature were measured every 30 minutes. Averages of daily range of temperature off Gijang and Yeongdeok during each observation periods were about 2.9 ℃ and 4.7 ℃ respectively. Dominant period of seawater temperature variation off Yeongdeok was one day with the lowest peak at 5 a.m. and the highest one at 5 p.m. generally, resulting from solar radiation.