A NEW GENERATION OF COASTAL MONITORING PLATFORMS GIUSEPPE ZAPPALA `  and FILIPPO AZZARO Istituto per l’Ambiente Marino Costiero CNR Section of Messina, Spianata S. Raineri 86, 98122 Messina, Italy (Received 15 September 2003; In final form 27 February 2004) The need for new instruments and systems for environment monitoring encouraged the development of a network of coastal platforms combining a high versatility with ease of use and affordability. Almost every instrument can be fitted on the platforms, thanks to the large amount of available power provided by both solar panels and wind generators. All the platforms host a pumping system that pumps water from five depths into a measurement chamber where a multiparametric probe is fitted and from where other devices (e.g. samplers or analysers) can draw samples. In situ temperature measurements are provided at the same pumping depths. A colorimetric nutrient analyser and a meteorological station complete the basic equipment. On one of the platforms, a remotely controlled water sampler and an ADCP are also fitted. The data-acquisition and transmission system enables the platform to be controlled remotely using a special macro-commands set. Several examples of use are presented. Keywords: Coastal monitoring; Buoys; Nutrients 1 INTRODUCTION At the end of the 1990s, the Italian Ministry for University and Research (MIUR) funded the Cluster 10, a set of marine research programmes. Among these, the “PI-CNR” (Potenzia- mento Infrastrutture—Infrastructure increase) and the “SAM” (Sistemi Avanzati di Monitor- aggio—Advanced Monitoring Systems) projects jointly designed new devices (coastal monitoring platforms and advanced instruments) to best fit the research needs. In recent years, surveys of water quality and meteorological parameters, on medium- and long-term scales, have been made possible by the availability of different kinds of coastal and offshore buoys and platforms, like those described, among others, by Carof et al. (1994), Grisard (1994), Eriksen (1997), Griffiths et al. (1999), Paul (2001), Seim et al. (2002), Nittis et al. (2003) and Pinardi et al. (2003). Buoys can have various shapes: discus (e.g. NOAA, OCEANOR), stylus (e.g. ODAS ITALIA, SEMB, PALOMA) or floating platforms, like NOAA’s NOMAD and those described in the present paper. Their functions may also be different; they can be “special- ized” for wind-wave measurements (Skey and Miles, 1999) or suitable for general purpose and/or physical, chemical and biological measurements, like those of Woods Hole Group’s Chemistry and Ecology October 2004, Vol. 20(5), pp. 387–398  Corresponding author. E-mail: zappala@ist.me.cnr.it ISSN 0275-7540 print; ISSN 1029-0370 online # 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/02757540410001727990