NEPTUNE: our eyes and ears beneath the sea
 Providing an earlier warning of tsunamis is one of the goals of the North-East Pacific Time-series Undersea Networked Experiments (NEPTUNE) project off the B.C., Washington and Oregon coasts.
NEPTUNE is a joint U.S.-Canada venture, led in Canada by UVic and funded by $62.4 million from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and the B.C. government. When complete, the project will be the world's largest cable-linked ocean observatory, using 3,000 km of fibre optic cable and 30 or more seafloor "laboratories," or nodes, from which land-based scientists will control sampling instruments, video cameras and remotely operated vehicles.
Information and images collected by NEPTUNE will flow instantly to shore where they will be relayed via the Internet to researchers, educational institutions, science centres and the public. In this way, NEPTUNE will give us a better understanding of earthquakes and the processes that cause them, and warn us about approaching tsunamis.
The first phase of NEPTUNE, off the B.C. coast, is scheduled to be fully operational by fall 2008.
To find out more about NEPTUNE and its research themes, visit www.neptunecanada.ca.
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