A curious rattail fish, or grenadier, supervises the installation of a seismometer more than 2.6 km below the ocean surface at ODP 1027, the deepest of five NEPTUNE Canada node sites off the west coast of Vancouver Island.
Over the summer, the NEPTUNE Canada team and its principal contractor, Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks, were hard at work installing the infrastructure and instruments on the 800-km loop that forms the world’s largest and most advanced cabled ocean observatory.
They successfully deployed instruments at four of the five node sites; those at the volcanic Endeavour Ridge site, 300 km off the West Coast, will be installed in 2010.
“It’s been an incredibly challenging process,” says NEPTUNE Canada director Dr. Chris Barnes. “As we all eagerly anticipate the first public flow of data later this fall, let’s take time to appreciate the amazing dedication and supreme effort made by so many to bring this nearly to completion. Remember, this has never been done before on this scale, anywhere.”
Led by the University of Victoria, NEPTUNE Canada pioneers a new generation of ocean observation systems that—using power and the Internet—provide continuous, long-term monitoring of ocean processes and events as they happen. For more images from NEPTUNE Canada visit the installation blog at www.neptunecanada.ca.
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