After a year and a half in development with the Government of Nunavut and the community of Cambridge Bay, a new community observatory is now streaming continuous data from the Arctic seafloor.

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Ocean-oriented activities in British Columbia account for eight per cent of B.C.'s jobs and seven per cent of the province’s GDP. Ocean sector revenues and government/not-for-profit ocean-oriented expenditures in B.C. represent $11.6 billion annually. Corresponding direct economic impacts included $5.76 billion in GDP, $4.2 billion in wages, salaries and benefits, and over 80,000 person-years of employment FTEs.

In early 2011 ONC signed a collaboration agreement with Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (AANDC) to complete a feasibility study on installing an Ocean Observatory in Canada's Arctic.  Led by the Ocean Networks Canada Innovation Centre with partners from ASL Environmental Sciences, Golder Associates and Coastal and Ocean Resources, a team of industry experts completed a detailed study on using technologies developed on VENUS and NEPTUNE Canada to establish a permanent, 24/7 monitoring capability in Canada's High Arctic.

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This technology can increase classification rates by providing a continuous stream of objects-of-interest. The IBM InfoSphere Streams system along with new image processing software will be used to automatically flag specific times in the underwater video archives. The processed video will be tagged with the appropriate metadata (e.g. object type, object size, movement, time). The result will be the ability to skip ahead to the next remarkable observation caught on camera without wading through numerous hours of insignificant video. Observation times will be reduced, allowing scientists to reach their conclusions quicker.