Electrolysis!
One day of deployment, 24 hours of time elapsed, and this is what our pressure transducer looked like:
That's a stainless steel housing, meant for use in harsh environments, which the ocean probably qualifies as. The tip that looks broken off is simply corroded away to the water line. The pressure transducer was mounted upside down at an angle in a tide pool, so you can do the math on the picture above and figure out just how much the transducer was submerged when the pool was filled. Most likely there was some internal fault in the housing that was passing current through the housing to ground, allowing this electrolysis to happen. We have a similar Omega transducer to this one that has survived well over a year mounted in the same location out in the field, so we know the design works normally. This particular Omega PX176-025A5V was doomed to lead a short life for some reason.
That's a stainless steel housing, meant for use in harsh environments, which the ocean probably qualifies as. The tip that looks broken off is simply corroded away to the water line. The pressure transducer was mounted upside down at an angle in a tide pool, so you can do the math on the picture above and figure out just how much the transducer was submerged when the pool was filled. Most likely there was some internal fault in the housing that was passing current through the housing to ground, allowing this electrolysis to happen. We have a similar Omega transducer to this one that has survived well over a year mounted in the same location out in the field, so we know the design works normally. This particular Omega PX176-025A5V was doomed to lead a short life for some reason.
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