Deployment of the Final Ocean Buoy at the Endurance Array
On June 2nd, an OOI team led by Oregon State University set out on a cruise to deploy the final ocean buoy of the Endurance Array on OSU’s R/V Pacific Storm.
During the brief, one-day cruise the team deployed the Endurance Array Oregon Line Inshore Surface Mooring in 25 meters of water as well as two coastal gliders. The deployment mooring included several sensors affixed to the surface buoy, along the mooring cable, and at the seafloor on the Multi-Function Node. These sensors will measure a variety of physical, chemical, and biological parameters including water velocity, pH, carbon dioxide, dissolved oxygen, nitrate, chlorophyll, and a bio-acoustic sonar to monitor populations of zooplankton and fish.
For a close up look at the deployment, check out the video footage captured by a reporter from The Oregonian, a KGW TV report, and feature piece in the Corvallis Gazette Times.
Deployments at the Endurance Array began in April 2014 with uncabled mooring and glider deployments (story here), continued through the summer with cabled mooring and seafloor package deployments (story here), and into the fall with the deployment of more uncabled moorings and gliders (story here). In April 2015, the OOI team installed coastal surface moorings and gliders as well as completed the first O&M “turn” (recovery & redeployment) of moorings installed in October 2014 along the Oregon and Washington lines (story here). In total, the Endurance Array includes 10 uncabled moorings, 3 cabled moorings, 2 instrumented seafloor packages, six gliders, and over 200 scientific instruments.
The Endurance Array network of cabled & uncabled fixed and mobile assets provides observations enabling insight into several important coastal processes including coastal upwelling, hypoxia, cross-shelf exchange, and eastern boundary current regimes.
