Ocean Networks Canada is a research and ocean observing facility hosted and owned by the University of Victoria. It is managed by the not-for profit ONC Society.
ONC operates observatories in the deep ocean and coastal waters of Canada's three coasts, the Arctic, the Pacific and the Atlantic, gathering biological, chemical, geological and physical data. ONC operates the NEPTUNE and VENUS cabled ocean observatories in the northeast Pacific Ocean and the Salish Sea. Additionally, Ocean Networks Canada operates smaller community-based observatories offshore from Cambridge Bay, Nunavut,Juniper and McLean, 2014 Campbell River, Kitamaat Village and Digby Island. Over 200 gigabytes of data are collected every day.Dewey et al, 2013
The NEPTUNE observatory is situated off the west coast of Vancouver Island in Barkley Sound, along the Cascadia subduction zone, on the Cascadia Basin abyssal plain, and on the Endeavour segment of the Juan de Fuca Ridge.Barnes et al, 2011
Altogether, the system includes 3 observatories, 5 shore stations, 850+ km of seafloor backbone cables, 11 instrumented sites, 32 instrument platforms, 6 mobile instrument platforms, 400+ instruments and over 2000 scientific sensors deployed.Heesemann et al, 2013
Scientific topics of study that are enabled by data from these observatories include Arctic oceanography,Juniper and McLean, 2014 deep-sea biodiversity,Matabos et al, 2013 marine ecosystem function,Wang and Pawlowicz, 22014 marine forensics,Anderson 2010 gas hydrates,Riedel and Willoughby, 2010 hydrothermal vents,Bemis et al, 2012 marine mammals,André et al, 2011 sedimentKatz et al, 2012 and benthicRobert et al, 2012 dynamics and tsunamiFine et al, 2013 studies.
Notes
References
Juniper, S. K., S. D. McLean, B. Pirenne, R. M. Flagg, and A. O. Bui (2014), First Results from a Real-Time Cabled Observatory in the Canadian Arctic Ocean, in Ocean Sciences Meeting 2014, Ocean Sciences Meetings, Honolulu. [online] Available from: http://www.sgmeet.com/osm2014/viewabstract.asp?AbstractID=17329
Matabos, M., M. Best, J. Blandin, M. Hoeberechts, S. K. Juniper, B. Pirenne, K. Robert, H. Ruhl, and M. Varadaro (2012), Seafloor Observatories, in Biological Sampling in the Deep Sea, edited by M. Consalvey and M. Clark, Wiley-Blackwell publishing.
Riedel, M., and E. C. Willoughby (2010), Gas hydrates - Geophysical exploration techniques and methods, in Geophysical Characterization of Gas Hydrates, edited by M. Riedel, E. C. Willoughby, and S. Chopra, pp. 1–13, Society of Exploration Geophysicists, Tulsa. [online] Available from: http://www.seg.org/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=0e72d3c0-9535-4e8f-bb94-8dd25b5ca36c&groupId=10161
Scherwath, M., G. Spence, M. Riedel, and M. Heesemann (2012), Gas Release Near Bullseye Vent - New Observations From NEPTUNE Canada"s Seafloor Cable, in Fall Meeting, AGU, p. OS43A–1794, American Geophysical Union, San Francisco. Wang, C., and R. Pawlowicz (2014), High Spatial and Temporal Resolution Oxygen Measurements in the Strait of Georgia and Their Relationship to Primary Production, in Ocean Sciences Meeting 2014, Honolulu. [online] Available from: http://www.sgmeet.com/osm2014/viewabstract.asp?AbstractID=14626
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