Introducing Georgie McBayFace!

Have you met our Georgie McBayFace, the new Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) - first of its kind in Canada for freshwater use - now jointly owned by GBF, Western University, the University of Waterloo and Wilfred Laurier University.

Georgie is basically a small, robotic, research submarine that scientists can program and send out on data-collecting missions into any area of the Bay they want to learn more about, such as wetlands to measure their resilience to climate change.

Georgie travels independently for up to 10 hours, taking important measurements of the water, like temperature, pH levels, total algae, the underwater topography (bathymetry) and much, much more. Georgie has an amazing array of sensors that can collect data on a variety of chemical measurements not previously known about the Great Lakes. We can send Georgie into very specific areas of the Bay currently lacking in data and she will be able to monitor water quality trends from year to year.

Georgie is a very sophisticated piece of equipment that scientists get very excited about. For the lay person, however, understanding what Georgie can actually do involves scientific terminology that can set heads spinning! Here is a simplified list of the sensors aboard Georgie and the important jobs they will be doing to collect data on Georgian Bay and support GBF’s work to protect it forever.

Dissolved oxygen(DO) is one of the most important indicators of water quality. It occurs when the wind blows dissolving it on the water surface and as a byproduct of photosynthesis in aquatic plants. Healthy levels of DO must be present in order to ensure the survival of fish and other aquatic organisms.

Things that can affect the amount of DO in water are temperature (colder water holds more), salinity (more salt means less oxygen) and bacteria (which consumes oxygen while eating decayed algae).

Dissolved organic carbon
Carbon is one of the basic building blocks of life and organic carbon is found in all living things. DOC constantly cycles through healthy water systems.

Generally, when dead plants and animals break down through the decomposition process, the DOC becomes a food source for microorganisms. It ultimately gets incorporated into higher levels of the ecosystem through the classic food chain formed by phytoplankton (eaten by zooplankton) and zooplankton (eaten by larger animals). Plankton are at the base of a critically important aquatic food web.

Most DOC originates naturally but higher concentrations of it can indicate too much human intervention such as soil run-off from farms.

Coloured dissolved organic matter (CDOM) is actually DOC (above) that you can see with the naked eye. It has colour ranging from brown to yellow-brown to yellow. It is the result of concentrated organic matter molecules (100s to 1000s of them) which are drained away from decaying matter and are suspended on the water’s surface.

Too much CDOM can negatively impact photosynthesis because it lessens the intensity of light as it penetrates the water. This, in turn, can impede the growth of phytoplankton which is the basis of the aquatic food chain and a major source of oxygen.

CDOM can also absorb harmful UV radiation from the sun and that protects organisms from DNA damage. UV absorption causes the CDOM to “bleach” which releases nutrients used by phytoplankton for growth.

Variations in the levels of CDOM in fresh water can be caused by changes in the amount of precipitation and/or human activity, such as logging, agriculture, etc.

Navigation on the surface is done through GPS and below the surface by the Doppler Velocity Log.

Doppler Velocity Log sends out a 4-beam “ping”. The response it receives from the bottom of a lake or a particular layer of water comes back in three directions, two horizontal and one vertical. This data allows the Doppler to calculate the position of the AUV while underwater and to measure currents.