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As the ice returns to cover much of the Arctic coastal waters, Ocean Networks Canada's community observatory at Cambridge Bay marks its first year of continuous operations.

In the terrestrial world, we rely heavily on optics and our vision, and less so on acoustics and hearing. In the ocean, the opposite is true. In coastal waters, light only travels relatively short distances (5-20m), so marine animals use light for sensing only the very near-field environment, while sound can travel huge distances (1-1000km), and informs marine animals of distant features and events. Marine scientists also take advantage of the efficiency with which sound travels in the ocean, and use it to both investigate and listen to phenomena over long distances.

Passive acoustic monitoring of marine mammals is a growing research theme on both the VENUS and NEPTUNE observatories. Universit of Victoria Co-op student Kristen Kanes works with the Ocean Networks Canada Innovation Centre (formerly Centre for Enterprise and Engagement, ONCCEE) to process passive acoustic data from their technology demonstrations. Together with John Dorocicz, Acoustic Systems Developer, the two “listeners” publicize the highlights from these data within relevant research communities. 

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The MicroSquid experiment seeks to understand what drives changes in the rate of oxygen consumption by organisms living in and on seafloor sediment.

ONC staff have co-authored another Journal of Acoustical Society of America (JASA) paper in conjunction with first author Nathan D. Merchant of the University of Bath and researchers from the University of Aberdeen. ONC's Tom Dakin, Sensor and Instrument Technology business development officer, and John Dorocicz, Acoustic Systems Developer, contributed to the manuscript, and Jeff Bosma and Richard Dewey also assisted with field work for the paper, "Spectral probability density as a tool for ambient noise analysis."

The time lapse captures changes on the seafloor in Saanich Inlet at 96 metres depth as recorded by a VENUS camera in May 2012.

After more than a year in the making, we are happy to release our latest publication, An Invitation to Science, available in print, downloadable pdf and iBook formats.

For the past two years, 2 benthic crawlers, Wally I and Wally II have served alternating stints helping scientists at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany explore and study the uniquely dynamic environment of the gas hydrate outcrops in Barkley Canyon. Each time we swap out one Wally from the seafloor, the other Wally takes its place on the seafloor. With each replacement we have seen improvements in the replacement crawler's instrumentation and capabilities. The currently deployed Wally I is no exception.

A group of researchers have successfully identified a new dinoflagellate species. Part of the large group of eukaryotes (approx. 1555 species), the new species has distinct morphological characteristics and was named Archaeperidinium saanichisp.nov. after Saanich Inlet, the place where, using a VENUS sediment trap, Dr. Vera Pospelova and her MSc student – Andrea Price collected samples and conducted their research that led to a publication in Marine Micropaleontology (see reference below).

It’s hardly been a case of “all play and no work” for Wally the Crawler. Researchers in Germany and Canada have been making heavy use of Wally and the unique data this deep-sea crawler gathers among the gas hydrates outcrops of Barkley Canyon. A recent paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters details their recent findings, which have implications for changes we may expect as Earth’s climate warms.

The seafloor is, arguably, one of the most extensive habitats on the planet and it is significantly understudied. It is home to a variety of benthic organisms that spend much, if not all, of their time on the bottom sliding along or ploughing through sediment. Some organisms are deposit-feeders that ingest sediments, absorb their organic content, and excrete faecal strings or pellets; other organisms are burrowers that actively mix sediments vertically. This process by which organisms mix up sediment, is known as bioturbation

An intense windstorm left thousands of Vancouver Islanders out of power and forced BC Ferries to suspend service to the mainland on the 22nd. Wind gusts exceeding 110km/h were recorded in places, as a train of intense low pressure systems struck Vancouver Island's west coast one after another. Data from Folger Deep revealed some interesting trends. At storm onset, oxygen concentrations increased significantly, probably due to mixing from wave action, and then levelled out. Water temperature also increased during the early stages of the storm. Salinity, on the other hand, dropped throughout the event.

Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (ADCPs) are instruments used in our subsea network and other oceanographic applications to measure the currents. We collect data from two types of ADCPs, manufactured by Nortek and RDI. These ADCPs use “sound beams” to measure water movement. Sound pulses are sent out in three or four different directions from the instrument; when sound waves strike suspended objects such as tiny particles or zooplankton, some of the energy is reflected back to the ADCP where it is detected by the instrument’s transducers. The received signal intensity gives an indication of the abundance of particles within the water. The Doppler shift of the received signal for each beam is used to determine the current velocity.

During the last few years, engineering and science teams at Ifremer, France's national public institute for marine research have developedTempo-Mini: a custom-designed instrument package for real-time monitoring of hydrothermal vent communities and their environment.