Aquarium’s Automated Data System Helps Ocean Conservation

By David Nolan, Senior Application Engineer, SyTech, Inc. and Michael Szentkiralyi, Visualization Software Product Manager, Rockwell Automation

Aquariums play a crucial role in sustaining aquatic species vulnerable to habitat changes. They’re uniquely equipped to help develop conservation strategies.

Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California is no exception. The mission of this nonprofit aquarium is to inspire conservation of the world’s ocean by showing the public the beauty and fragility of ocean life and the importance of preserving this ecosystem. One way it does this is through breathtaking exhibits showcasing thousands of ocean-dwelling animals and plants from both the Monterey Bay area and around the world.

This is accomplished in part by designing and maintaining exhibits that replicate the natural habitat of ocean life. A vital part of this task is the continuous on-site ingestion of sea water from the bay.

At an intake of more than 1,300 gallons per minute, the water is treated using life-support technology to regulate critical parameters, such as oxygen levels. Because exhibits replicate different biomes, ingested water is treated to multiple different specifications. When it needs to be disposed, it’s treated and discharged back into the ocean.

A Rockwell Automation FactoryTalk^® View Site Edition connected to more than 60 Allen-Bradley^® PLCs handles the control system in the main aquarium. FactoryTalk View SE collects more than 2,000 items every 10 to 30 seconds organized across 16 data log models in the native DAT format managed by the software.

In 2022, the aquarium launched a new exhibit called “Into the Deep” that increased the data logging substantially.

The ARCC is about 10 miles north of the aquarium in the City of Marina. It uses a smaller-scale control system run by RSView^®32 software, a legacy system that’s a predecessor of FactoryTalk View SE. In total, 262 data points are organized across 16 data log models. The data is logged every minute in native DBF file format.

The weather station uses a Campbell Scientific data logger for meteorological data. It collects a dozen data points related to the ambient weather, such as temperature, humidity, and pressure. Data from the logger is periodically added to a rolling CSV file and retained for 1 to 3 days, which is shared with outside researchers such as CenCOOS (Central & Northern California Ocean Observing System).

This data represents life-support information such as temperature, dissolved oxygen levels, pH, tank levels, HVAC readings, emergency generator status, and general data for the exhibits. For example, the dissolved oxygen level taken from the ocean must be reduced to extremely low levels to accommodate the creatures in the “Into the Deep” exhibit.

Figure 1. The Monterey Bay Aquarium consists of 3 areas: the Main Aquarium and Outbuildings (1), the Animal Research and Care Center (2), and the Weather Station (3) on the third floor of the aquarium main building. Each location performs data collection independently, creating data islands that can’t be correlated easily. [CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE]

For example, Animal Care Division staff making daily rounds and keeping track of animal behavior, such as a jellyfish swimming lethargically, will know something is wrong, but not always the cause or when it started. Finding out more information would require access to the control room where the FactoryTalk View SE display is located and manipulating a trend display. Once the relevant data to the observed condition was found, they didn’t have an easy way to export it for further analysis.

In addition, they had an even greater challenge when issues were detected in multiple areas, because no easy way existed to synchronize them chronologically or combine the data points into a singular table.

It was clear that processing data needed to be more efficient. For instance, producing a monthly water discharge report for the State of California required hours of data gathering from multiple sources and performing the calculations manually in Microsoft Excel. This arduous task occupied the water-science engineers’ time, taking them away from other important tasks.

Figure 2. The data island consolidation was handled by a combination of SyTech’s XLReporter and Rockwell Automation functionality, including some legacy components used to access the RSView data and a new REST API connector for FactoryTalk View SE called the FactoryTalk Data Agent. [CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE]

Because each log model created its own tag name list in the database, XLReporter’s advanced connectivity was used to make every tag from every table selectable for any report. From the user’s perspective, there was only a single tag space (see Figure 3). This connectivity also provided “out-of-box” metrics and filters across every table.

The approach provided the basis for aquarium data scientists to implement automated reporting, and for other staff such as animal care or life-support groups to access on-demand dashboards across the network using their web-enabled devices.

Information Anytime, Anywhere

There are a few obvious examples of how this consolidated data source has saved time and resources for the aquarium. To be in compliance with California’s Water Quality Control Plan, explains Water Science Data Manager Eric Kingsley, the aquarium needs to estimate the amount of seawater we are discharging

 “The only way to do this is to take all the flow data for various points in the facility and use that to produce an estimate of the discharge amount. With XLReporter, the compliance metrics are now calculated automatically in the background on a daily schedule, with no human intervention necessary,” he adds.

Figure 3. Because each log model created its own tag name list in the database, XLReporter’s Multi-table Database connector was used to make every tag from every table selectable for any report. From the user’s perspective, there was only a single tag space. [CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE]