A winter's passage has been captured by cameras and instruments measuring ice thickness, salinity, oxygen and and phytoplankton abundance in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.

The little crawler that could, couldn't for a while. Then it could again, thanks to skillful and persistent efforts by a scientist driving it from the other side of the planet.

A new batch of interesting talks and posters were presented at the February 2014 Ocean Sciences Meeting by scientists using Ocean Networks Canada data and facilities.

​

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. 

​

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