Program Update – November 2011

The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) program in November continued progress testing and procuring critical components of the OOI and providing updated information on instruments and other aspects of the program to the community that ultimately will use the OOI and its data.

On the East Coast, At Sea Tests are continuing off New England and test data has been coming in from that equipment. The At Sea Tests consist of three moorings deployed at two sites on the continental slope south of Cape Cod. Two of the test moorings are for the Pioneer Array component of the OOI and another test mooring is designed to be used in the deep ocean global array part of the program. Click here to read more about the At Sea Tests and here to see a video.

The program also continues to procure equipment for the OOI. Follow the links for more information on recent contract awards for an Air-Sea Instrument Package Contract and Wire Following Profiler Contract.

This month, the Instrument Table Section of the OOI Website has been updated with detailed information on the Global Array Components for the OOI. This website feature provides the scientific community with up-to-date, detailed descriptions of the instrumentation found throughout the numerous components and locations of the OOI. The first component of the OOI featured in this new tool was the Pioneer Array and this month we added the Global Array sites including: Irminger Sea, Station Papa, Argentine Basin and the Southern Ocean. The Endurance Array tables will be added within the next few weeks, followed by the Regional Scale Nodes tables. All of these Instrument Tables can be downloaded. As you can see from the distribution of infrastructure sites on the OOI map, the OOI will have multiple arrays – with 56 total moorings along with numerous seafloor nodes – that will support over 750 instruments.

Continuing outreach efforts to the community, the OOI Program next week will participate in the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting with a booth space (#1109) and a variety of sessions, posters and information sharing opportunities throughout the show. AGU will take place from December 5-9 in San Francisco, California.

Tim Cowles, Vice President & Director of Ocean Observing Programs at the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, will provide an OOI program overview and discuss the need for sustained ocean data for decades at The Ocean Observatories Initiative: Sustained Ocean Data for Decades session, on Wednesday, December 7, at 8:00 a.m. in Room 3007. Presentations also will be offered by the University of Washington’s Regional Scales Nodes (RSN) team on recent work at the Axial Seamount site off the coast of Washington. The OOI Education and Public Engagement (EPE) team, led by Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, also will present information on enabling near real time data use in undergraduate classrooms. Click here for detailed information on all OOI activities at the AGU Fall Meeting.

In addition, the OOI XBOX game will be displayed at a special event, Exploration Station, held prior to the start of the AGU meeting. This event will be held from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, December 4 at Moscone Center South, Rooms 103 and 104, and is free and open to the public. Click here for more information on the Exploration Station Event.

Please continue to visit the OOI Website to track progress on OOI tests, events and more.