2014 OOI Milestones

ooi-milestonesIn 2014, the OOI moved toward completion of the construction phase with eight deployment cruises installing 34 moorings, 9 instrumented seafloor sites, 16 gliders, and approximately 550 instruments.

These successful deployments occurred in the northern hemisphere Global sites (Station Papa, Irminger Sea), within the coastal domain of the Atlantic and Pacific (Pioneer and Endurance Arrays), and along the Cabled Array on the Juan de Fuca Plate.

Pre-commissioned data are being telemetered from the deployed uncabled systems, and are flowing from the cabled seafloor-mounted systems. Pre-commissioned data will be made available to the user community following the required system validation procedures. Seismometer data from the OOI sites over the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate are now accessible via IRIS (download here), coastal glider data (Pioneer and Endurance) and Pioneer Array profiler data are expected to be available through a data portal on the OOI webpage in late December. The OOI webpage will provide frequent updates on data availability as the project progresses through the final few months of construction.

We are now entering the final deployment phase of the many instruments and platforms that comprise the OOI, as well as preparing for the delivery of data to the OOI user community. The installation of the remaining two OOI Global Arrays, Southern Ocean and Argentine Basin, will occur in February and March 2015, respectively; while the final Endurance and Pioneer Array deployments are now scheduled for April 2015.

During this past year, the OOI project team connected with the user community through several face-to-face interactions. In February, members of the OOI team attended the 2014 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, where they held town meetings and other events to communicate OOI information and create forums for discussion on data and other topics. The first Town Hall provided a construction status report as well as a discussion on OOI data; the second was a joint town hall hosted with Ocean Networks Canada to discuss advances in ocean observing in the Northeast Pacific Ocean.

Click here for the full story on the Ocean Sciences Meeting.

In April, the OOI took part in the 3rd USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, DC. This festival is the largest science festival in the U.S. and features nationwide contests and school programs. Members of the OOI Team were present at the Consortium for Ocean Leadership exhibit where they discussed the OOI program and allowed students, teachers, and families to conduct hands on experiments demonstrating the capabilities of ocean gliders and ocean observing.

Click here for the full story on the USA Science and Engineering Festival.

The OOI closed out the year participating in the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting in December. The AGU Fall Meeting, held annually in San Francisco, CA, is the largest worldwide conference in the geophysical sciences, attracting over 20,000 Earth and space scientists, educators, students and policy makers.

Stay tuned in the coming months as the OOI completes its remaining deployments and the data begins to stream online.

For more information on each deployment see below:

COASTAL DEPLOYMENTS – APRIL 2014

In April, the OOI continued deployments at the Pioneer Array off the coast south of New England and the Endurance Array off the coast of Oregon and Washington.

The Pioneer Array deployment took place April 11 to April 20 on Research Vessel (R/V) Knorr.  The cruise included recovery of two Wire Following Profiler moorings and the Pioneer Central Surface Mooring and deployment of five Wire Following Profiler Moorings and three Gliders.  Twenty nine instruments were deployed on the moorings and 15 instruments were deployed on the gliders.

The Endurance Array cruise, April 17-21, was conducted on the R/V Oceanus, departing and returning from Newport, OR. The cruise accomplished six main objectives: deployment of the Oregon Inshore Surface Mooring, Washington Offshore Wire-Following Profiler Mooring, Oregon Inshore Coastal Surface-Piercing Profiler Mooring, Washington Inshore Communications Mooring, three Teledyne-Webb Slocum robotic gliders and pre- and post- deployment CTD casts with water sampling at each of the mooring sites. All four moorings and three gliders were successfully deployed, carrying a total of 48 oceanographic instruments.

Click here for the full story on the April Coastal Deployments.

STATION PAPA DEPLOYMENT – JUNE 2014

In June, an OOI team led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography on the R/V Melville conducted deployment and scheduled maintenance activities for the global component of the OOI infrastructure located at Station Papa in the Gulf of Alaska. During the cruise, the team deployed one Global Profiler Mooring, two Flanking Moorings and one Open Ocean Glider. Additionally they successfully recovered all previously deployed moorings and the two previously deployed Open Ocean Gliders.

VISIONS ’14 – JULY-SEPTEMBER 2014

The Research Vessel (R/V) Thomas G. Thompson set sail July 13th on the VISIONS ’14 expedition to complete construction of the OOI Cabled Array in the Northeast Pacific. The work and cruise was led by the OOI team at the University of Washington utilizing the state-of-the-art underwater robotic vehicle, ROPOS. The cruise comprised a total of seven legs totaling 83-days.

Work during the Visions ’14 cruise focused on the installation of instruments and seafloor infrastructure at the Axial Seamount, Hydrate Ridge, and the Slope Base. Five instrumented seafloor sites were deployed on the Axial Seamount and two were deployed on Hydrate Ridge. Additionally, a Cabled Shallow Profiler Mooring was deployed at the Slope Base; Deep & Shallow Profilers were deployed at the Axial Base. A total of 89 instruments were deployed.

Two cabled sites associated with the Endurance Array on the continental shelf were also visited during the Visions ’14 cruise. Two Benthic Experiment Packages were deployed as well as one Cabled Surface-Piercing Profiler Mooring, one Cabled Deep Profiler Mooring, and one Cabled Shallow Profiler Mooring. A total of 46 instruments were deployed

IRMINGER SEA ARRAY – SEPTEMBER 2014

The Irminger Sea Global Array was successfully deployed in September by an OOI team, led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), on the R/V Knorr. The deployment included one large, instrumented Global Surface Mooring, two instrumented Flanking Moorings, and one Open Ocean Glider. The Irminger Sea Array, southeast of Greenland, is one of four sites in the OOI focusing on the critical, yet under-sampled, high-latitude regions of the Pacific and Atlantic. It includes a network of moorings that will support sensors for measurement of air-sea fluxes of heat, moisture and momentum; physical, biological and chemical properties throughout the water column; and geophysical observations made on the seafloor.

Click here for the full story of the Irminger Sea Deployment.

COASTAL DEPLOYMENTS – OCTOBER 2014

An OOI team, led by WHOI 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 recovered the five wire-following profiler moorings deployed in April 2014, and deployed replacement moorings at each site. Additionally, two shallow (200 meter max depth) and three deep (1000 meter max depth) coastal gliders were deployed. A total of 54 instruments were deployed.

In December 2014, three Coastal Surface Moorings and two Coastal Surface-Piercing Profiler Moorings were deployed at the Pioneer Array, led by a team from WHOI on the R/V Knorr.

The second phase of Endurance Array deployments took place between October 6-10 on the R/V Oceanus with an OOI team led by Oregon State University. The team deployed a total of 58 instruments on 2 fixed moorings, 1 wire-following profiler mooring, and 3 coastal gliders off the coast of Oregon and Washington. As with the Pioneer deployment, the team conducted CTD casts with water sampling at each mooring site.

Click here for the full story of the October Coastal Array Deployments.