Cable laying is an important task at all of our locations – after all, we're building a cabled seafloor observatory. But it was especially important and challenging at our Cascadia Basin location, where we sought to install three 12.5km cables radiating out from the instrument platform to form an equilateral triangle with bottom pressure recorders at each corner. Such an array will be invaluable to researchers studying tsunamis in this region.

To accomplish these cable lays we used ROCLS, ROPOS's Remotely Operated Cable Laying System. ROCLS consists of a rugged aluminum frame that holds detachable cable drums. Individual cables are carefully spooled onto drums. Then, when it is time to deploy, they are fitted onto ROCLS. ROPOS is then attached to ROCLS and the two deployed...