After almost a decade of planning and installation, the planets have finally aligned for the NEPTUNE Canada project. Billed as the world's largest undersea cabled observatory, NEPTUNE consists of five main data-collection sites off the west coast of Vancouver Island. They are spread over an expanse of the ocean floor and connected by an 800-kilometre loop of fibre-optic cable. Read more
University of Washington to explore the planet from the ocean floor John Delaney's vision of a network of fibre-optic and power cables off the Pacific Northwest coast to measure long-term, real-time collection of scientific data will become a reality with a $126 million research construction grant. Delaney is director of the underwater research facility called the Regional Scale Nodes program. An earlier name, Project NEPTUNE, did more than invoke the Roman god of seas. NEPTUNE stood for North East Pacific Time-integrated Undersea Networked Experiments.
Regional Scale Nodes and the Centre for Environmental Visualisation, U. of Washington The University of Washington has received federal funding for two legs for a cabled observatory on the Juan de Fuca plate with 480 miles of cable, seven primary science nodes, two highly capable moorings and a shore station planned at Pacific City, Ore. Dashed lines show possible expansion of the system in the future. The UW's system will work in collaboration with a coastal observing system planned near Newport, Ore., and a Canadian system being built to the north.
The University of Washington's Regional Scale Nodes or RSN of the NSF OOI will extend continuous high-bandwidth (tens of Gigabits/second) and power (tens of kilowatts) to a network of instruments widely distributed across, above, and below the seafloor in the northeast Pacific Ocean.