Oyster farmers and recreational boaters launching out of Childs River landing are making the most of the mild late-summer weather, on a sunny day in Falmouth.
As they motor out from the public dock toward Waquiot Bay, they pass a tall piling. Affixed near the top is a small tide gauge designed to provide real-time information for anyone navigating this inlet. It looks like a foot-long pvc pipe with a small solar panel on top.
Robert Mawrey designed, developed, and installed the gauge. He knows first-hand that waterways like this can get pretty shallow in certain conditions when the tide is low. Mawrey’s been boating around Ockway Bay, just down the shoreline in Mashpee, for over two decades. But, he said, its not without its challenges.
"It's very shallow," said Mawrey. "And during low tide, if you don't realize it's low, if you don't realize the water's being pushed out by the wind, which happens where we are when the blows from the northwest, you can get stuck in the mud or not get back to your dock."
Mawrey learned the hard way not to rely on tide charts which are based on NOAA estimates, and not real-time local data.
"Many of the bays in Cape Cod, there are no NOAA gauges," he explained. "The closest to this is Woods Hole. And Woods Hole has very different tides to Waquoit, very different to Popponesset or, even to some extent, Falmouth."
So Mawrey, who is an engineer and inventor, designed and produced his own tide gauge.
"I've lost count how many versions of these I made," he said. "The original first ones looked like a, you know, shower cap – so stuck out too far. Long, skinny pipes. Wires and boxes. And now it's a small thing you hold in your hand."
He’s made gauges that use ultrasonic and radar technology. And he’s patented a tilt-sensor for a dock-mounted gauge that measures the dock’s angle. He likened it to a float in a gas tank.
Mawrey lives on a low lying road. So he’s also put his gauges to work as a flood alert system. Neighbors can sign up to receive email alerts when the water level is high.
Having proved the concept in his own neighborhood, Mawrey’s company, Sentient Things, now offers a similar service to municipalities. He’s currently working with the town of Branford, Conn. to install a tide gauge and flood alert system there.
He’s also sold gauges to marinas and homeowners in search of hyper-local water level readings.
The information from Mawrey’s growing network of gauges is publicly available online and people can subscribe to alerts for their area. Among those using the tide alert system are researchers at the Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. Dr. Megan Tyrrell is research coordinator:
"I've set up a tidal alert for their Jehu Pond monitoring site because if the road floods … that affects our access, but more importantly, community access, in and out of quite a few neighborhoods down by South Cape Beach State Park," she said.
And Research Associate Theo Collins says it’s interesting to compare the research reserve’s water level results to Mawrey’s data.
"We are a nexus for research and information about the bay," said Collins. "We are, of course, interested in projects that can provide people with more information about it."
Mawrey’s daughter Evelyn is a computer scientist, and she’s developing iPhone and Android tide alert apps. Mawrey said the apps will be more user-friendly than the current web-based system. He said they’re currently being tested but should be out within a month.
The free apps will combine Mawrey’s local tide gauge information with NOAA and other public data. And he hopes people will take advantage of them.
"And so the challenge for us is going to be, when we get this out, to get people to realize that there is better information available that's coming soon," he said. "Please use it."
You can check it out at tidealerts.com.
