Standard Operating Procedures for Environmental Sample Processor Deployments

This document details the standard operating procedures (SOP) for planning and conducting in-water ESP deployments on moored and bottom lander platforms. It is primarily based on the ESP operations that are routinely conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC) and Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL), but is widely applicable to other ESP users. The SOP provides an overview of the mooring platforms and subsystems required to support ESP operations during deployments, maintenance and calibrations, chemical reagent requirements, standard curve development and image processing, quality control testing, data reporting, and mooring deployment and recovery.