The Antifouling Power Comes From Inside!

Home lighting experts enter the marine market with underwater lights that prevent growth and interior moisture without coatings or treatment.

Underwater lights set the mood for time aboard when the sun goes down, but keeping light-blocking marine growth at bay requires the dirty work of regular lens brushing and scraping to remove creeping algae, or the toil of seasonal applications and removal of antifouling coatings.

A small company in Englewood, New Jersey, that specializes in exterior home lighting has developed what could set a new standard for underwater lighting. Metro Marine Lighting entered the marine industry with a bang, earning a “Top Product” accolade by Boating Industry magazine for its F-Series Full Spectrum Underwater Lights.

Unlike any other underwater lights on the market, the F-Series features patented antibiofouling and anticondensation technologies that require no coatings and minimal maintenance. That’s because the antifouling force field is a wavelength of light that comes from inside the light housing in the form of Ultraviolet C (UVC) LEDs like those used in water purification systems to kill bacteria. The UVC technology blocks growth from attaching to the light lens so it can’t take root and grow, while the company claims its patented dry gas assembly method also prevents corrosion-causing moisture from forming inside the fixture.

“We assemble our fixtures in a Class 1000 Clean Room, using a patented process where we replace all vapor inside our fixtures with clean, dry N2, guaranteeing that our fixtures will remain free from condensation,” explains company president Daniel Deutsch.

Metro Marine initially tested its lights by submerging them in seawater for a six-month trial. “Growth started covering the lenses of our control fixtures (without UVC) within days. Even months later, with the lenses of the control fixtures completely covered with seaweed and barnacles, the lenses on our fixtures with our UVC LEDs remained crystal clear.”

Take a quick look at some video of the test:

Beyond the game changing anti-fouling tech, Metro Marine claims its F-Series also deliver more customization options than typical underwater lights, including:

• Precision optical lensing produces both the 45-degree beam angles that focus the light, projecting it farther out, and 90-degree beam angles for ambient lighting or to illuminate a wider range, both with precise beam control instead of just redirecting the light with reflectors.
• Instead of using RGB for color and White LEDs separately, a white LED is integrated in each of the 18 individually optically lensed RGBW (red, green, blue, and white) LED configurations, which the company says will deliver whiter whites and a wider spectrum of color blends.

Metro Marine’s F-Series underwater lights are available in single color or full spectrum, 45- or 90-degree lens angles, in round or elongated housings.

$1,290 (Single Color); $1,860 (Full Spectrum RGBW) | Available through CWR (USA), and Brunger Export (International) | metromarinelighting.com