Program Update – October 2014
The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) continued its efforts toward construction completion in 2015, with deployment cruises off the coasts of New England and Oregon/Washington during October. The remaining two OOI Global Arrays, Argentine Basin and Southern Ocean, will occur in February and March 2015, while the final Endurance and Pioneer Array deployments are now scheduled for April 2015.
The OOI team set sail on the R/V Knorr October 3 on a 9-day cruise to deploy the second phase infrastructure at the Pioneer Array off the coast of New England. The team was led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), with partner Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The team recovered the five wire-following profiler moorings deployed in April 2014, and deployed replacement moorings at each site. Two shallow (200 meter max depth) and three deep (1000 meter max depth) coastal gliders were also deployed. The region of the continental shelf where the Pioneer Array is deployed off the New England Coast is characterized by sharp gradients in ocean temperature and other properties across the shelf, currents that flow along the shelf, and strong biological productivity. A total of 54 instruments were deployed. [Click here to see Detailed Pioneer Array Instrument Tables.]
In addition to the deployments and recoveries, the team conducted CTD casts with water sampling at each mooring site, CTD surveys in the vicinity of the moored array, multi-beam bathymetry surveys in the Pioneer region, and shipboard ADCP surveys in the vicinity of the moored array.
The next phase of the Pioneer Array deployment sequence will be conducted during November 15-23 from the R/V Endeavor, with Coastal Surface Moorings to be added to the moored systems of the Pioneer Array.
The second phase of Endurance Array deployments off the coast of Oregon/Washington was completed between October 6-10 by Oregon State University, using the R/V Oceanus. The team deployed a total of 58 instruments on 2 fixed moorings, 1 wire-following profiler mooring, and 3 coastal gliders. As with the Pioneer deployments, the team conducted CTD casts with water sampling at each mooring site. 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. The final phase of Endurance Array deployments will occur in April 2015. [Click here to see Detailed Endurance Array Instrument Tables.]
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