Oregon Slope Base Shallow Profiler Mooring (RS01SBPS)

The Oregon Slope Base Shallow Profiler Mooring is situated adjacent to the continental slope off the coast of Oregon approximately 2,900 meters deep. Here, ocean water properties are profoundly impacted by the California Current, and perhaps internal waves. The coastal region of the Pacific Northwest is a classic wind-driven upwelling system where nutrient-rich deep waters rise to replace warmer surface waters. The result is a large increase in marine productivity that ranges from phytoplankton to fish to marine mammals. Near bottom fauna are periodically negatively impacted by the flow of deep waters with very low oxygen concentrations (hypoxia events), and upwelling of corrosive, acidified waters onto the continental shelf.

As with other Cabled Shallow Profiler Moorings, this mooring contains a Shallow Profiler (SF01A) and Platform Interface Controller (PC01A), and hosted on a 12 ft across, 7 ton platform that is connected to the fiber-optic cable.  The Shallow Profiler houses 10 scientific instruments and is tethered to a winch that pays out fiber optic cable allowing the profiler to rise through the water column until a fixed depth below the oceans surface. The specific depth is determined by currents and wave conditions at the surface.  Eight instruments are also housed within the Platform Interface Controller mounted 200 m below the sea surface on the mooring platform.  The fiber-optic cable provides the mooring with up to 3000 watts power and 10 Gb communication bandwidth and is co-located with a Low-Power Jbox that collects complementary water column data near the seafloor.

When coupled with other Cabled Array and Endurance Array installations off the central Oregon coast, the Slope Base Shallow Profiler Mooring will provide a wide variety of opportunities for observing coastal phenomena, including cross-shelf and along-shelf variability.

Instruments

This site includes following instruments. To learn more about an instrument type, select its name on the left. To see the relevant data streams for a particular instrument, select the instrument code in the first column which will take you to the OOI Data Portal.