Credit: Sunburst Sensors
To have healthy people we need to have a healthy ecosystem and that means making sure that our oceans, and the marine food web in them, are healthy. For that reason, the acidity (called pH, which stands for "power of hydrogen" and is defined as the negative base 10 logarithm of the molar concentration of hydrogen ions) of oceans has been a concern and in 2013 a contest was begun to create a better sensor to measure acid or base levels offshore.
The contest is now over and a small business has won. A tiny company called Sunburst Sensors - from the non-ocean state of Montana, no less - swept first place in the accuracy and affordability categories of the Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE, sponsored by Wendy Schmidt (the wife of Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google) who is also on the Board of Trustees of the $300-million-in-assets Natural Resources Defense Council activism group.
Sunburst Sensors had experience making sensors that detect CO2 in freshwater and they won the prizes ($1.5 million total) by extending the usable depth of their technology by 500 percent and making them suitable for oceans.
American Council on Science and Health Research Associate Nicholas Staropoli attended the award presentation at the Council on Foreign Relations in Manhattan and wrote a detailed article about the technology on ACSH partner site Science 2.0.
