Cabled and Uncabled Endurance Array Components Deployed

(Click to enlarge) Deployment of the Endurance Washington Inshore Surface Mooring, on 07 October in 30m of water offshore of Grays Harbor, Washington. The multi-function node (MFN) in the foreground contains seafloor instruments and the mooring anchor, which is being lowered to the seafloor using the R/V Oceanus A-frame. The surface buoy of the mooring, which contains the communications equipment and surface instrumentation, is visible in the background. (Photo Credit: Craig Risien, OSU)

The OOI Endurance Array, located off the coast of Oregon and Washington, is a cross shelf coastal array composed of cabled and un-cabled moorings, seafloor sensors, and gliders.

Over the last several months, the OOI has successfully deployed several components of the array.

Cabled assets were deployed on the Endurance Array in August and September as part of the Visions ’14 cruise, led by the University of Washington, on the R/V Thomas G. Thompson. These deployments included two Benthic Experiment Packages (one on the shelf and one offshore), two digital still cameras, two upward-looking bioacoustic sonar systems, a wire-following profiler mooring, a two-legged shallow profiler mooring, and one Cabled Coastal Surface-Piercing Profiler mooring. A total of 46 cabled instruments were deployed.

The second phase of the Endurance Array uncabled deployments, led by Oregon State University, was completed between October 6-10 using the R/V Oceanus. The team deployed a total of 58 instruments offshore of Newport, OR and Grays Harbor, WA on two Coastal Surface Moorings, one Wire-Following Profiler Mooring, and three Coastal Gliders (Teledyne Webb Slocum gliders). In addition to the deployments, during the cruise the team conducted CTD casts with water sampling at each mooring site.

“All went well on this cruise. The major milestones were the first deployment of the WA Inshore surface mooring and the first deployment of a glider on the Washington line (glider 381, which has a shallow-water 200m buoyancy engine).” Mike Vardaro, OOI Associate Project Scientist.

The remaining Endurance Array infrastructure will be deployed in April 2015, including Coastal Surface Moorings and Surface-Piercing Profiler Mooringss along both the Oregon and Washington lines.

The Endurance Array includes a network of fixed and mobile assets to observe cross-shelf and along-shelf variability in the coastal upwelling region of the Oregon and Washington coasts, and provide synoptic, multi-scale observations of the eastern boundary current regime. [Click here to see Detailed Endurance Array Instrument Tables.]