The ROV has just re-deployed a seafloor camera after maintenance.

The University of Victoria’s Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) is making its first foray into the Arctic, just as the sea ice extent is setting a new record low. The observatory has been granted a five-year research license from the Nunavut Research Institute for a cabled seafloor observatory system and surface weather station in the coastal hamlet of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. The community observatory, using technologies developed by UVic’s VENUS and NEPTUNE Observatories, intends to provide year-round, near real-time undersea monitoring of the northern environment, and to make research data available to the community for educational and other purposes.

In the first week of August, the Strait of Georgia VENUS array suffered a major power fault (see System Status). As a result, the field team retrieved all instruments on the seafloor leaving only the cable and the node frames.

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POGO (Profiling OceanoGraphic Observatory) is alive and well! The vertical profiling system, installed at a depth of 396 m on Barkley Upper Slope is now sending its instrument float on regular journeys from seafloor to surface and back. And some interesting new data products are available for examining a host of water properties through the depth of the water column.

In early July, the Ocean Networks Canada education team travelled up island to the quaint seaside community of Bamfield to meet with undergrad students and educators from across western Canada. The team was invited by the Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre to introduce the Observatory to students attending the summer academic session and also to teachers and educators attending an annual workshop.

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On June 26, we completed our summer expedition, Wiring the Abyss 2012 aboard the R/V Thomas G. Thompson (University of Washington). Despite the inevitable challenges we encounter when deploying deep sea instruments, overall the cruise was a success.

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On June 11, NEPTUNE Canada reached the halfway point for Wiring the Abyss 2012, this summer’s installation and maintenance cruise. Part of the original crew who set sail on May 27 returned to dry land at Bamfield after a very busy two weeks. They were replaced by a new contingent of crew members, who will remain with the ship until cruise end on 26 June. If you have been following on our cruise page, you’ll know that the first two weeks were very busy indeed!

The VENUS Engineering team has finished installing the first of three ferry-based monitoring systems on the Queen of Alberni (BC Ferries).

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POGO, our vertical profiler system will return to the water this summer after a trip to Japan for repair and extensive testing. POGO will be placed approximately 10 km north of the Barkley Canyon node to provide information about continental shelf waters off the coast of Vancouver Island.

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Our first in a series of free technical workshops was held on 8 March 2012 at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences in Vancouver. 12 attendees from UBC, Simon Fraser University and the Federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans joined Ocean Networks Canada staff members for the day-long session.

Scott McLean, Tom Dakin and Jeff Bosma manned the Ocean Networks Canada booth at Oceanology International 2012, the largest ocean technologies exhibition in the world. This 3-day event happens every 2 years in London, UK. Our booth featured Ocean Networks Canada, VENUS, NEPTUNE Canada, ONC Centre of Enterprise and Engagement & BC government displays. Traffic at the booth was heavy.
 

There were so many discussions & meetings that ONCCEE staff were unable to sit in on any presentations or visit all the exhibitor's booths, though Scott did present a talk on behalf of NEPTUNE Canada.

For more than 6 years VENUS has been deploying and operating various camera systems on its network collecting imagery from Saanich Inlet and Strait of Georgia. Growing interest from the research community that rely on visual data from the deep ocean to conduct their experiments have led VENUS to expand the selection of cameras installed on the network. As of December 2011, VENUS operates 4 cameras – two in Saanich Inlet and two in the Strait of Georgia.

Ocean Networks Canada Director, Dr. Kate Moran, introduced Ocean Networks Canada and a new way to explore beneath the ocean's surface to a TEDx audience in Vancouver last November.

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The W.M. Keck Foundation has awarded $1 Million to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) for a new geodesy observatory to be connected to Ocean Networks Canada and the Ocean Observatories Initiative Regional Scale Nodes (OOI RSN). This interdisciplinary project, led by Dr.Jeff McGuire and John Collins of WHOI, will allow scientists to monitor three Cascadia subduction zone segments off the coasts of Vancouver Island, Washington and Oregon.