OOI Endurance Array team sets sail on fall O&M cruise

On Sunday Sept. 18, the R/V Atlantis set sail off the coast of Oregon and Washington for a 17-day Operations and Maintenance cruise of the OOI Coastal Endurance Array. During this cruise, the OOI team led by Oregon State University (OSU) will recover and redeploy six surface moorings as well as the Washington Offshore Profiler Mooring and several uncabled surface piercing profilers.  The team will also recover 1 coastal glider and deploy 5-6 more.

Biannual maintenance cruises are an important element of OOI Coastal Array operation and maintenance as it ensures that infrastructure and instrumentation in the ocean are constantly replaced before they break and are refreshed to minimize the influence of bio-fouling and sensor drift.  The coastal ocean is a harsh environment; equipment are constantly blasted by sand and debris and beaten by waves. Additionally, full, high resolution, data sets are able to be downloaded from the recovered instrumentation, increasing the data available from the telemetered near-real time data sent to shore via satellite.

The OSU-team has been hard at work to prepare the OOI equipment for deployment. A time-lapse video (below) shows a mere 10 days of that effort as they integrate mooring elements and prepare to place these equipment out to sea for six-months.