Clearwater Instrumentation, Inc. specializes in the design and manufacture of surface drifters. Surface drifters are used by scientists and engineers in research and operational programs to measure the velocity of ocean surface currents and to obtain environmental data on seawater and the atmosphere from anywhere on the world's oceans. We also provide consulting services to our clients, which include research institutions, universities, and governmental agencies in the United States, Europe and Asia.

Innovation and a low cost have been the hallmarks of Clearwater products since the company's founding in 1989. From the beginning, the company's founder, Dr. Gary Williams, worked closely with scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, to develop prototype surface drifters for the Surface Velocity Program of the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE/SVP). Clearwater's goals were to develop small free-drifting environmental data collecting platforms that accurately follow surface currents, relay their position and data via satellite from throughout the world's oceans, are durable and long-lived, and are inexpensive. The final objective was critical because the instruments must be deployed in large numbers in order to obtain the distribution of data needed to observe the conditions of ocean surface water as is relates to weather and long term climate change. These goals have been achieved in our C! learSat™ drifter instrument series and we are one of the principal suppliers of these instruments to WOCE participants.

In 1992 we pioneered drifter techonolgy by developing a parachute delivery system that allows air-dropping of surface drifters to permit cost-effective deployment of instruments under conditions where ships are not readily available or when large areas must be covered in a short time. In 1994, we continued these efforts with an air deployment system for a small near-surface drifter for the US Coast Guard Research-and-Development center.

We are now manufacturing an advanced microprocessor controller of our own, the ClearSat 2.0™, which is used in our instruments. This controller provides us great flexibility in adding new transducers, such as a barometric pressure sensor, and configuring transducer sampling and data conditioning. The ClearSat 2.0™ has been certified by Service Argos, allowing Clearwater to be recognized as a supplier of Argos PTTs.

Existing applications which we are manufacturing include measurement of barometric pressure for accurate weather forecasting; GPS (Global Positioning System navigation) surface drifters for use in sea-air rescue and accurate surface circulation studies; and salinity sensors; and combined surface temperature gradient-barometric pressure sensors, for predicting the paths of hurricanes and powerful marine storms. The introduction of a reliable barometric pressure sensor that is accepted by meteorologists would at least double the market for surface drifters.

For the long term we are optimistic that sales will continue to grow. This is because new applications continue to be found for the instruments and because today's research programs are also producing information which is valuable to operational programs — like weather forecasting — which require information that is continually updated. Surface drifters will continue to be valued instruments that will be purchased by operational programs in greater numbers even as the research market tops out.