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Just home from Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, our engineering and outreach team reports successful maintenance and upgrades to the shore station and cabled undersea platform resting on the Arctic Ocean seafloor. Highlights of the trip included visits with Kiilinik School and the community. More details to come, as the community observatory approaches its first birthday on 29 September 2013.

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The University of Victoria’s Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) and the Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI) are undertaking an expedition on board the $62-million research vessel Falkor, with researchers from Canadian universities studying low-oxygen, acidic waters that form naturally off the coast of Vancouver Island.

One of our key mandates at Ocean Networks Canada is to find and encourage highly qualified personnel to sustain and advance ocean industry. At the Centre of Innovation, these young professionals-in-training come from a wide range of disciplines in engineering and science.

In September 2012, U Vic electrical engineering student Nicolai Bailly was brought on board to help develop the world’s first very low frequency (VLF) digital hydrophone calibration system.

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The Fraser River reaches the ocean near Vancouver, and there the fresh water it carries mixes with ocean water to form a thin plume of buoyant brackish water, which according to one oceanographer is the “showpiece of the Strait of Georgia.” Oceanographers have been studying the Fraser River plume since at least the 1960s, but more recently, VENUS has installed a radar system to measure the surface currents in this region.

“Integration of ocean gliders into the Ocean Networks Canada observatories is progressing”, advised Paul Macoun – Project Manager of the VENUS Phase II developments. Presently, the engineering team is working up the first of two gliders for deployment off-shore this summer.

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During the final days of Ocean Networks Canada's month-long expedition on board the CCGS Tully, award-winning science journalist Bob McDonald caught up with the research vessel at Bamfield, a tiny port on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

An impressive plume of gas has been detected rising from the seafloor off Vancouver Island in a region monitored by the NEPTUNE observatory.

Today marked the end of Leg 1 - servicing installations in the Salish Sea - wrapped up after a successful 10 days of operations.

Responding to a failure of an array power connector on the VENUS Strait of Georgia in early fall 2012, a joint team of engineers from Ocean Networks Canada and OceanWorks Int’l have spent a week (Feb 5-9) aboard CS Wave Venture recovering, repairing, testing and redeploying the VENUS primary sub-sea infrastructure in the Strait of Georgia.

The VENUS buoy profiling system winch system test on the Ocean Technology Testbed buoy is progressing. Soon after installation in December 2012, the system underwent a site acceptance test with the manufacturer. Following on from this, the Data Management group has now developed a real time linkage between the system and the database. The next stage is to develop the software infrastructure to command and control the system.

A strong magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck west of Craig, Alaska at 12:58AM PST, 5 January 2013. Tsunami warning and alerts were issued for a broad section of the Alaskan and Canadian coastline, but no damaging waves were generated.

The Ocean Technology Lab’s (UVic) Bluefin AUV has been retrofitted with a suite of instruments to support science experiments in Saanich Inlet (and beyond).

The VENUS Observatory opens a rare window into the undersea environment of a unique ocean ecosystem: Saanich Inlet, off the southeast coast of Vancouver Island. The observatory site here includes a wide range of sensors and instruments, including DISCO, or Digital Stills Camera system, that provides researchers with high-resolution 8 megapixel underwater images.

A powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck central Moresby Island in the Haida Gwaii archipelago at 8:04PM PDT, 27 October 2012. Residents along the west coast—from Alaska to Vancouver—also felt several aftershocks up to magnitude 5.8. However, no major damage or injuries were reported. This was the largest temblor to hit Canada since 1949, when an 8.1-magnitude quake hit west of the Queen Charlotte Islands, in the same area.