Design, development and testing at field of a modular Mini Automatic Water Sampler (MAWS) based on magnetic activation

This article illustrates the design, development and testing at field of MAWS (Mini Automatic Water Sampler), a modular automatic water sampler based on the use of magnetic forces. This work shows the reasons behind the needs of developing such a system whose design is based on the operational requirements arising from the experience acquired during various campaigns that took place in the Arctic Ocean. MAWS is expressly addressed to the sampling of water in the inaccessible areas near the front of polar tidewater glaciers and in the summer 2018 it was mounted on-board PROTEUS, an Unmanned Marine Vehicle (UMV), with the aim of collecting water samples in a scientific campaign carried out in the Svalbard Archipelago.