Backgrounder: $20 Million to Expand Seafloor Observatory
NEPTUNE (the North-East Pacific Time-series Undersea Networked Experiments project) will be the world’s first regional cabled ocean observatory. It is a joint U.S.–Canada venture led by the University of Victoria in Canada and by the National Science Foundation in the U.S.
The entire NEPTUNE project will lay about 3,000 km of powered fibre-optic cable over the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, a 200,000 sq km region off the coasts of B.C., Washington and Oregon. The Canadian segment, managed by NEPTUNE Canada, is the first stage and will consist of an 800-km loop of cable-linked seafloor laboratories, or “nodes,” in the deep ocean off British Columbia.
The NEPTUNE Canada cable will land at UVic’s shore station in Port Alberni, B.C. Information and images gathered by instruments far out at sea will flow instantly via the Internet to a data management and operations centre in Victoria and transmitted in real time to scientists, science centres, schools and home computers around the world.
The first installation stage of NEPTUNE Canada is scheduled for fall 2007 with the laying of the cable, two nodes and some instrumentation. The remaining nodes and instrumentation will be deployed in summer 2008.
With the additional $20 million, the observatory will provide the science community with a plate-scale, four-dimensional view of a large area of the Earth’s crust and overlying ocean. The new nodes triple the scientific data return from the instrument arrays. One of the new nodes, in Barkley Sound, will become a focal point for education and research at the Bamfield Marine Science Centre, which is supported by five western Canadian universities, including UVic.
NEPTUNE Canada is using new technology that is being designed by Alcatel as part of a $39 million contract signed with UVic in October 2005. Power and Internet communications on this scale have never before been distributed in the deep ocean.
NEPTUNE is a radically new way of exploring a distant hostile environment. It allows for decades of continuous, interactive observations and experiments from anywhere in the world via the Internet. As a result, there is extensive international scientific and engineering interest in this project.
Knowledge gained through NEPTUNE will address pressing global and regional issues such as fish stock conservation, earthquakes and tsunamis, deep sea ecology, climate change, offshore resource development, algal blooms, and marine pollution.
NEPTUNE will directly generate jobs in information technology, engineering, and research and support services. Indirect benefits are expected in the subsea technology, robotics, communications, policy, education and tourism sectors.
The $10.3 million VENUS (Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea) project, also led by UVic, is a separate cabled seafloor observatory deployed in Saanich Inlet (February 2006) and the Strait of Georgia (spring 2007). NEPTUNE researchers are using a node on the VENUS observatory to test instrumentation and to prototype its remote control and data management systems.
For more information on NEPTUNE Canada visit www.neptunecanada.ca
< Back to ReleaseThe entire NEPTUNE project will lay about 3,000 km of powered fibre-optic cable over the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, a 200,000 sq km region off the coasts of B.C., Washington and Oregon. The Canadian segment, managed by NEPTUNE Canada, is the first stage and will consist of an 800-km loop of cable-linked seafloor laboratories, or “nodes,” in the deep ocean off British Columbia.
The NEPTUNE Canada cable will land at UVic’s shore station in Port Alberni, B.C. Information and images gathered by instruments far out at sea will flow instantly via the Internet to a data management and operations centre in Victoria and transmitted in real time to scientists, science centres, schools and home computers around the world.
The first installation stage of NEPTUNE Canada is scheduled for fall 2007 with the laying of the cable, two nodes and some instrumentation. The remaining nodes and instrumentation will be deployed in summer 2008.
With the additional $20 million, the observatory will provide the science community with a plate-scale, four-dimensional view of a large area of the Earth’s crust and overlying ocean. The new nodes triple the scientific data return from the instrument arrays. One of the new nodes, in Barkley Sound, will become a focal point for education and research at the Bamfield Marine Science Centre, which is supported by five western Canadian universities, including UVic.
NEPTUNE Canada is using new technology that is being designed by Alcatel as part of a $39 million contract signed with UVic in October 2005. Power and Internet communications on this scale have never before been distributed in the deep ocean.
NEPTUNE is a radically new way of exploring a distant hostile environment. It allows for decades of continuous, interactive observations and experiments from anywhere in the world via the Internet. As a result, there is extensive international scientific and engineering interest in this project.
Knowledge gained through NEPTUNE will address pressing global and regional issues such as fish stock conservation, earthquakes and tsunamis, deep sea ecology, climate change, offshore resource development, algal blooms, and marine pollution.
NEPTUNE will directly generate jobs in information technology, engineering, and research and support services. Indirect benefits are expected in the subsea technology, robotics, communications, policy, education and tourism sectors.
The $10.3 million VENUS (Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea) project, also led by UVic, is a separate cabled seafloor observatory deployed in Saanich Inlet (February 2006) and the Strait of Georgia (spring 2007). NEPTUNE researchers are using a node on the VENUS observatory to test instrumentation and to prototype its remote control and data management systems.
For more information on NEPTUNE Canada visit www.neptunecanada.ca
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Keywords: 20, million, expand, seafloor, observatory
