News
OOI Data to be Archived by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information
NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) established a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) to share high-quality oceanic data collected from the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Ocean Observatories Initiative’s instrument arrays. The goal of the partnership is to archive and deliver the initiative’s data for continued research on ocean processes.
“WHOI is pleased to be working with NCEI for the long-term preservation of data produced by the Ocean Observatories Initiative” said Jeffrey Glatstein, Senior Manager of Cyberinfrastructure at WHOI. “The initiative is a science-driven ocean observing network that delivers real-time data from more than 900 instruments to address critical science questions regarding the world’s oceans. Given the long-term timeframe of the program and the impact of having a continual record of measurements, the archiving of this data is a significant step in making these data available for researchers in the future.”
“Under this partnership agreement, NOAA expects to be provided at least 30 years of high-quality oceanographic data produced by the Ocean Observatories Initiative, commissioned in 2017, for preservation and stewardship” said Jason Cooper, NCEI’s Archivist.
NCEI will be responsible for acquiring and managing the required IT storage for the data that WHOI will provide, which is expected to amount to roughly seven terabytes. NCEI will ensure that the metadata associated with the data are up to federal and international standards such as those regarding storage, preservation, and accessibility. In addition to providing the data that have been collected to date, the agreement also calls for WHOI to transfer an additional 710 gigabytes of data annually for the next ten years.
WHOI is an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to ocean research, exploration, and education. WHOI and their Oregon State University (OSU) and University of Washington (UW) partners designed and now manage the instrument arrays involved in this CRADA partnership that collect chemical, biological, geophysical, and physical measurements in the global ocean from below the seafloor to the surface.
The CRADA allows NCEI and WHOI to achieve their common goal of supporting research related to ocean and atmospheric processes by sharing their findings with the scientific community, policymakers, and the general public.
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Tenth Turn of Global Station Papa Array
The Global Station Papa Array is in the Gulf of Alaska at a critical region of the northeast Pacific Ocean. The region is extremely vulnerable to ocean acidification, has a productive fishery, low eddy variability, and is impacted by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, often described as the as a long-lived El Niño-like pattern of Pacific climate variability.
A team of 10 scientists and engineers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the University of Washington will be onboard the R/V Sikuliaq for 15 days in May to ensure that this Array continues to provide data from this important region. The team will deploy three OOI moorings, two open ocean gliders, and one profiling glider. A waverider mooring, which measures wave height and direction, will be deployed for the University of Washington. During the expedition, the team also will be conducting water sampling during recovery and deployments, and sampling while underway for instrument calibration purposes.
Located next to the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) Surface Buoy and deep-water sound buoy, the Station Papa Array is an important contributor to a cooperatively studied region. The University of Washington operates a waverider mooring near the buoys. The US Coast Guard’s Research Vessel John P. Tully regularly collects data in the region. And the Department of Fisheries in Canada operates a glider line in the region.
[media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/CGSN_Papa-10_IRR_Presentation_2023-05-01.jpg" link="#"]The Global Station Papa Array and complementary components. Credit Sarah Battle, NOAA/PMEL, adapted from OOI.[/media-caption]This annual spring “turn” of the Array is no small undertaking. A successful turn requires months of equipment preparation and testing. After all instrumentation has been cleared to go, it is then shipped from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to Seward Alaska, where it is again tested as the moorings are assembled for loading onboard the Sikuliaq. Loading is complex, as well. All deck space is fully utilized and when loading is complete, 106,340 pounds of equipment will have been moved onto the ship.
“We have a good, experienced team and the Sikuliaq captain and crew couldn’t be better, “said Kris Newhall, Senior Project Manager at WHOI and Chief Scientist for Station Papa 10. “Our work in this region is really important for the data being generated are helping scientists to understand primary production, marine heat waves, and a whole lot more.”
Regular updates from the Station Papa 10 expedition will be reported here. Bookmark the page and follow along.
Read MoreOOI Receives SOLAS Endorsement
The Surface Ocean – Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS) endorsed the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) as one of its Integrated Atmosphere-Ocean Time Series Stations at the forefront of SOLAS science.
SOLAS is an international research initiative that aims to understand the key biogeochemical-physical interactions and feedbacks between the ocean and atmosphere, and how this coupled system affects and is affected by climate and global change. In operation since 2004, SOLAS has 1227 members worldwide, and 31 scientific networks with members from 14 nations.
OOI data directly address the SOLAS core themes on ‘Greenhouse gases and the oceans’, ‘Air-sea interface and flux of mass and energy’, ‘Atmospheric deposition and ocean biogeochemistry’ and ‘Ocean biogeochemical control on atmospheric chemistry’, as well as the cross-cutting themes on ‘Polar oceans’, ‘Upwelling systems’ and ‘Climate intervention’.
The designation as one of SOLAS’s time-series stations benefits both OOI and SOLAS, as well as the broader ocean science community. The endorsement provides OOI with the opportunity to provide input to the development, planning, and implementation of SOLAS and closer links to other international programs. The interconnection provides scientific value through contextual links and collaborative opportunities as well as the potential for the development of standardized measurement methods and protocols, facilitating quality control and data sharing.
“We are pleased to have been endorsed by SOLAS’ Scientific Steering Committee, which will continue to broaden the use of OOI data to answer critical ocean-related questions,” said Jim Edson, Principal Investigator of OOI’s Program Office. “We are particularly excited about the possibility of greater collaboration and continued implementation of best practices within the international ocean observing community.”
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OOI Data: An Ever Growing Userbase
The collection, archive, and delivery of high-quality oceanographic data to the scientific community is central to the mission of the Ocean Observatories Initiative’s (OOI). Researchers world-wide are taking advantage of the 134 billion rows of freely available OOI data to make discoveries about the oceans and atmosphere. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the OOI was designed to collect and serve ocean data for up to 30 years. The 30-year timescale makes it possible to measure and observe both short-lived episodic events and longer-term changes occurring in the ocean. Such data are critical to increasing knowledge about ocean processes and if and how the ocean is changing.
How OOI Data Are Being Used
Since OOI data are freely available to anyone with an internet connection, researchers in organizations ranging from small land-locked colleges to major international oceanographic institutions are using OOI data in their scientific investigations. The next generation of ocean scientists are increasingly using OOI data as evidenced by the topics of PhD dissertations and honor theses. The Ocean Data Labs Project also has inspired thousands of students and their college professors to integrate real-time ocean data in the classroom. The project published an OOI Lab Manual, designed for use in introductory oceanography courses providing students and teachers the opportunity to apply timely and even real-time oceanographic data into their studies.
OOI has a broad and increasing science user base, as reflected in the number of OOI-related publications that advancing scientific understanding of ocean processes. The OOI-related publications and the Web of Science citation statistics are compiled by the WHOI-Marine Biological (MBL) Library through Web of Science and Dimensions searches on the main literature databases. The search terms include keywords such as “Ocean Observatories Initiative”, “Irminger Sea Array”, “Global Station Papa”, “Pioneer Array”, “Coastal Pioneer”, “OOI Pioneer”, “Endurance Array“, “Regional Cabled Array”, etc. The subset of publications using OOI data is identified by the OOI PI team. A complete, searchable list of OOI-related publications can be found here.
Table 2: Publications and NSF awards from 1 January 2013 through 31 March 2023
Metric |
OOI-related publications in refereed journals | Subset of publications using OOI data or infrastructure |
NSF Awards |
Number of publications or awards | 326 | 177 | 129 total $66.4M |
Total Web of Science citations | 4295 | 2250 | Not applicable |
Sum of Altmetrics scores | 4679 | 2795 | Not applicable |
Distinct lead authors or PIs | 263 | 146 | 96 |
Distinct lead institutions | 143 | 73 | 49 |
Countries | 24 | 16 | USA only |
This process does not necessarily capture all publications that use OOI data, particularly publications that use data obtained from third-party sites that ingest and serve OOI data (e.g., IRIS, Glider DAC and GOA-ON) that would not fall under our keywords. OOI is actively working to improve our ability to identify OOI-related publications by minting DOIs for our data sets.
Even so, this past year’s total for OOI-related publications is the largest to date. The resulting statistics show that OOI data and its infrastructure has been used in 177 peer-reviewed publications since 2013 and has been described, mentioned and/or motivated research in 147 others as shown in Table 1. The number of publications has grown steadily since 2013 as shown in Figure 1. The total given for 2023, represents the first quarter of that calendar year, and we are on tract to meet or beat last year’s total.
[caption id="attachment_26011" align="aligncenter" width="900"]Figure 1. (top panel) the number of publications in refereed journals by year. (bottom panel) The number of OOI-related NSF grants by year. They do not include those grants that support OOI operations and maintenance (O&M).[/caption]
The OOI funding information is obtained from the NSF website by searching awards for “Ocean Observatories Initiative” in their abstracts, selecting those with greater than a particular percentage of relevance and rejecting outliers (such as the OOI O&M and OOIFB awards). Our searches use a cutoff for percentage of relevance of 68%, which provides a meaningful comparison of OOI-related NSF awards from 2013 to the present. The OOI was commissioned in 2016, coincident with the significant jump in NSF-funded OOI-related awards shown in Figure 1. Since that time, the number of awards has slowly dropped, possibly due to impacts from COVID-19. Interestingly, the decrease in NSF awards coincided with rapid growth in publications. We can think of several reasons for this including:
- The freely available OOI data that can be used directly for research without a dedicated NSF (or other) award.
- The use of other funding sources to analyze and publish OOI data.
- The need to expand our search to include other keywords in addition to “Ocean Observatories Initiative.”
We believe that all three play a role in the number of new starts supported by the NSF. This is particularly true of reason (2) for which there is clear evidence in the A Growing Global Reach section provided below.
Improved Accessibility
The OOI has developed an easy-to-use tool to explore and visualize OOI data known as Data Explorer, which was launched in October 2020. The number of users using this tool has been on a steady trajectory of growth since its inception. For example, Figure 2 shows the number of
[caption id="attachment_26014" align="aligncenter" width="900"] Figure 2. A time series of the accumulated number of unique users since the roll out of Data Explorer in October, 2020. Note, these numbers do not include users who access OOI data via outside data aggregators/distributors such as IRIS, NDBC, IOOS, and the GOOS Glider DAC.[/caption]
OOI Data Explorer unique users since its launch date. A unique user is defined as an individual that comes to the Data Explorer website at least once as defined by Google Analytics. Note that each user is counted only once, i.e., a person who visits Data Explorer a hundred times is counted as one unique user. Today, over 5000 individuals are using our Data Explorer user interface, which represents an average of 175 new users per month. It should also be noted that this total represents the minimum number of OOI users as many long-time users of OOI data continue to use the OOI Data Portal, M2M, our THREDDS and ERDDAP servers, and OOI seismic and hydrophone data from IRIS.
Everyone Benefits
The OOI is not funded to conduct research with OOI data. The OOI’s infrastructure is maintained and operated by Marine Implementing Organizations (MIOs) at WHOI, Oregon State University (OSU), and the University of Washington (UW). These MIOs represent three of the largest oceanographic institutions in the United States and, as expected, researchers in these institutions actively incorporate OOI data in their research (and education). However, they are clearly joined by researchers from many other institutions who also use OOI data as the basis of their scientific findings at shown by Figure 2. This figure shows that three-quarters of publications citing the OOI come from non-MIO institutions, while two-thirds of NSF awards for OOI research goes to non-MIO institutions. It should be noted that the NSF Awards do not include OOI Operation and Maintenance support (O&M) from NSF; i.e., it is just the NSF research grants that mention OOI.
[caption id="attachment_26016" align="aligncenter" width="898"] Figure 3. Pie charts showing publications and awards by institutions.[/caption]A Growing Global Reach
OOI’s global reach is wide and deep. Researchers in 22 countries are using OOI data as shown in Table 1. The global accessibility of ocean data to anyone with an Internet connection allows researchers in land-locked countries and States to study the ocean, without having ever to go to sea. To wit, nations other than the United States are increasingly supporting OOI-related research, as reflected in Figures 4. While the NSF is listed as the source of funding for nearly 40% of the publications shown in the Figure 1, the contributions of other federal agencies, foundations, and nations continue to grow, reflecting the value of the data generated by this vital ocean observatory.
This is even more pronounced if the funding sources are broken down by period. For example, Figure 5 shows the funding source statistics prior to and post CY2019. Approximately half of the publications acknowledge NSF funding from 2013 through 2019. The NSF is acknowledged in approximately one-third of the publication since the start of 2020, which is consistent with the results from Figure 1 (bottom panel). The number of publications that do not acknowledge a source of funding has grown from 4% to 7%, which suggests a growing number of researchers using the freely available data without support. A quick look at these publications shows that several of these are PhD theses. The number of papers acknowledging NSF support is still significant, suggesting that our search is missing some of the new starts and should be modified. More importantly, however, the decrease in NSF acknowledgements coincides with a substantial increase in the acknowledgements of support by European and other countries in their published research. The enhanced stature of the OOI as a global research observatory has resulted in growing collaborations with other observing initiatives such as GOOS, POGO, SOLAS, IOOS and SCOR.
[caption id="attachment_26018" align="aligncenter" width="670"] Figure 4. A pie chart showing the foundations, agencies and nations providing support for OOI-related research. Note that the percentages reflect the number of times that these funding sources were acknowledged compared to the total acknowledgements and do not represent the amount of actual funding.[/caption][caption id="attachment_26019" align="aligncenter" width="932"] Figure 5. As in Figure 3 but divided into two periods showing acknowledgement of support through 2019 and thereafter.[/caption]
Data Users’ Views
What better way to assess the potential of OOI data than to ask researchers who use it as a foundation for their scientific findings? We share with you some of the views of OOI data users below:
Value of Long-Term Time Series
“The OOI Program offers the opportunity to compare detailed time-series observations of the biological pump across multiple sites, complementing both ship-based process studies (e.g., EXPORTS; Siegel et al., 2016) and more globally wide-spread observations from Biogeochemical-Argo floats and satellites. The OOI arrays represent a diverse set of complementary physical and biogeochemical settings that together could be used to better constrain how interactions between biological and physical processes influence the biological pump.”
– Hilary I. Palevsky, Dept. of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Boston College, Boston, MA, USA
“High resolution and bandwidth ocean observing data from myriad, co-located instrument arrays, such as those provided by the RCA, are crucial to building time series spanning months or years that are required to quantify the flux of methane from the seafloor, possible impacts of ocean warming and seismic events, and the evolution of these highly dynamic environments. Short term or nonsystematic monitoring systems do not provide enough data to produce statistical correlations, nor detect low-frequency cycles with high degrees of confidence. In the years to come, we plan to achieve longer time-series to detect potential non-periodic, low-amplitude influences, possibly from climatic forcing. Such influences can only be reliably inferred with the kind of long-term, systematic sampling methodology made possible by the OOI observatory.”
– Yann Marcon, MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, D-28359 Bremen, Germany
“The six-year record of real-time data flowing from the Regional Cabled Array forms an unparalleled foundation on which to build an ocean drilling program with the International Ocean Discovery Program to understand the relationships between microbial, hydrological, geochemical, and geophysical processes in zero-age, hydrothermally active oceanic crust. Proposed Axial drilling will provide a unique opportunity to determine the nature of subseafloor hydrological properties and develop an unprecedented 3-D understanding of subseafloor processes in unsedimented crust.”
– Julie A. Huber, Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA
“The OOI Oregon Shelf site is part of the Coastal Endurance Array. This site, also known as NH-10 as it is located 10 nautical miles offshore along the historic Newport Hydrographic Line, is embedded in the Northern California Current System (NCC). The NCC supports ecologically and economically important fisheries and other marine resources that are impacted by major climate fluctuations: marine heat waves, El Niño, seasonal hypoxia, ocean acidification, and changes in the timing of spring transition to upwelling and fall transition to downwelling. To quantify these types of anomalous events against a baseline of ‘normal’ conditions, we first need decades-long time series to establish what ‘normal’ is (or was). The OOI data collected at the NH-10 site enable us to form these decades-long time series by extending velocity, temperature, and salinity time series from previous programs at NH-10. Together, the OOI data and earlier data form time series that do go back decades, which are very rare for subsurface oceanographic data. The resulting time series can be used to better understand local and basin-scale forcing of physical and biological processes at intra-seasonal, seasonal, interannual, and decadal time scales, as well as detect long-term changes and trends embedded within such variability.”
– Melanie Fewings, College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA
Providing Data to Assess Climate Change
“The OOI’s Global Irminger Sea Surface Mooring provided the first multi-winter observations from a high northern latitude surface flux buoy and related them to both localized (100-500 km) intense weather conditions and larger scale (~3000 km) modes of atmospheric variability. The data allowed us to create the first multi-winter characterization of air-sea exchange in the high latitude North Atlantic from observations, including year-to-year variability in the influence of the Irminger Sea tip jet on winter heat loss. We were able to identify a new mechanism by which the atmosphere controls ocean heat loss leading to dense water formation. The results are particularly important as the connection between air-sea exchanges and the ocean circulation is still poorly understood, hindering attempts to understand climate change induced slowdown of the Atlantic circulation and its climate feedbacks.
– Simon A. Josey, National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, UK:
“An important priority for the scientific community is reducing uncertainty in our current quantification of Southern Ocean air-sea CO2 flux and developing the capacity to both predict and monitor how air-sea CO2 flux in this region may change under future climate change. The suite of biogeochemical sensors that were deployed on the OOI Southern Ocean surface mooring provide a unique opportunity to make advances in this quantification of carbon fluxes. In particular, the mooring data provide a valuable opportunity to validate and complement other Southern Ocean in situ carbon system measurements, particularly from biogeochemical Argo floats, as they provide in situ measured wind/atmospheric variables needed to calculate carbon fluxes, high temporal frequency not available on other platforms.”
– Veronica Tamsitt, Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia and Centre for Southern Hemisphere Oceans Research, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Hobart, TAS, Australia
“The Regional Cabled and Coastal Endurance Array profiling current meter and CTD data are an incredible novelty for internal tide (ITs) studies, enabling the delineation of the relative contributions of many processes that provide pathways for energy through the ITs and dissipation and mixing. The long duration enables discrimination of processes in frequency that have very similar frequencies, and calculation of the impacts of intermittent inertial waves, long period currents (e.g., eddies; upwelling), and seasonal stratification changes on the shear, strain, and turbulent mixing associated with the ITs. The high vertical resolution enables the differentiation of reversible (i.e., vertical advection) and irreversible (i.e., diapycnal mixing) processes, based on tidal isopycnal displacements. In short, the OOI data offer an incredible opportunity to better understand the critical role ITs play in determining the meridional overturning circulation and oceanic heat budget.”
– Douglas S. Luther, School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA
Improved Understanding of Ocean Processes
“The seismic, geodetic, and hydrothermal data from the OOI Regional Cabled Array at Axial Seamount continues to provide my research group with the opportunity to participate in a thriving community seeking to understand the inner workings of a submarine volcano. The OOI RCA at Axial seamount also provides the long-term observations that help anchor a wide variety of complementary observational studies.”
– William S.D. Wilcock, School of Oceanography, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA
“The OOI Pioneer Array at the Mid-Atlantic Bight (MAB) shelf edge provides a unique opportunity for studying subsurface offshore transport of the shelf water. One example is that Pioneer Array moored profilers and gliders captured clear signals of frontal subduction of the shelf water on the edge of an impinging warm-core ring. The subducted shelf water was carried offshore by the anticyclonic ring flow underneath a surface layer of ring water and is invisible on the ocean surface. This form of offshore transport of shelf water had not been realized previously. We used the water mass characteristics captured by the Pioneer Array to develop an ocean model to study the dynamics of the frontal subduction and to quantify the surface-invisible part of the shelf-water offshore transport. Future analysis of Pioneer Array data can provide a more robust quantification of the cross-shelf exchanges at the shelf break and the influence of warm-core rings on the physical and biological properties of the MAB continental shelf.”
– Weifeng (Gordon) Zhang, Applied Ocean Physics & Engineering, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, USA
“At Axial Seamount, the OOI infrastructure combined with constraints on the architecture of the magma plumbing system, provides the opportunity to tie dynamic volcano processes of magma recharge and eruption directly to individual magmatic structures imaged within the volcano interior. It provides the opportunity to answer important questions about how and where melt accumulations form, how melt is transported through the lower crust to feed shallower reservoirs, and how eruptions are triggered. Studies of the deep magma plumbing, conducted within the framework of the even higher-resolution 3D multi- channel seismic imaging data recently acquired at Axial Seamount (Arnulf et al., 2019), would be unprecedented for at any volcano on Earth.”
– Suzanne M. Carbotte, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, NY, USA
“Using 4-Dimensional Variational Data Assimilation in a ROMS model (Regional Ocean Modeling System), we undertook a 4-year reanalysis (2014- 2017) of circulation at the Pioneer Coastal Array site. Starting from a 7-km resolution model identical to the MARACOOS ocean forecast system, we refined the resolution through two nested grids to achieve ~700 m horizontal grid resolution in a domain that fully encompasses Pioneer. Though an order of magnitude fewer in number, in situ observations of temperature and salinity from Pioneer moorings and gliders had two to three times the impact of satellite sea level and temperature data on modeled across-shelf fluxes. The study shows that it is feasible to compute very-high-resolution ocean reanalyses that are meaningfully constrained by dense observing networks such as Pioneer. Achieving event-wise correspondence between observed and modeled sub-mesoscale features can provide context to the interpretation of other Pioneer data and opens further opportunities, such as coupling circulation to companion models of biogeochemical and ecosystem processes.”
– John Wilkin, Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA
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R/V Neil Armstrong in Drydock while OOI Team Onboard
The fact that the R/V Neil Armstrong was out of the water on blocks at the Deytens Shipyard in North Charleston, SC, didn’t deter the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Coastal and Global Scale Node (CGSN) Team members from loading equipment and setting up laboratories for the first at-sea test deployment for the Coastal Pioneer Array in its new location in the Southern Mid-Atlantic Bight. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Port Engineer Hank Ayers helped make this dual operation possible. Ayers has been handling logistics for the Armstrong for 10 years. Over the course of time, he’s developed a knack for multi-tasking, and keeping on schedule and budget, while keeping the 238-foot Armstrong in tip top shape.
Looking at the Armstrong’s at-sea schedule, Ayers arranged for a regulatory drydock period prior to the Pioneer test deployment expedition near the array’s test deployment off the coast of Nags Head, NC. (See figure to right). Regulatory drydock checks are required about every two and a half years for inspections mandated by the US Coast Guard and the American Bureau of Shipping. While in drydock, the Armstrong underwent inspections of the propeller shaft, 17 sea chest valves were checked for condition and wear, the port and starboard anchor chains were replaced, and about 10 percent of the ship’s hull was repainted most of this along the waterline, where it is most susceptible to wear and marine growth, while other sections were touched-up as needed. Other regular maintenance tasks were also completed while the crew was in port.
[embed]https://vimeo.com/819612282[/embed]Ayers explained the complexity of getting a huge vessel that weighs 2641 tons with a 50-foot beam into drydock so the keel can be inspected. “The ship is steered into a big basin with a movable wall at one end. The goal is to have the ship land on top of blocks so when the water is pumped out, it will be securely in place. It’s a delicate process. There’s a ball that floats up at the bow when the ship is in the right position. Once aligned, the crew keeps the ship centered and in position. A diver is also in the basin to make sure that once the ship gets close to the blocks there are no problems down there. Once the ship is in place on the blocks, the water is drained out.”
The Armstrong was out of the water for 20 days. The Pioneer At-Sea Test team arrived on February 16 to begin the unusual process of mobilizing for the expedition while the ship was technically on land. The shipyard is equipped with huge cranes needed to load the 8000+ pound moorings onto the stern of the ship. Under normal operating conditions, the cranes on the ship would be used to load the equipment onboard.
Said CGSN Instrument Lead Jennifer Batryn who helped with the mobilization, ““It was definitely weird seeing the Armstrong out of the water. It’s a very different perspective than most people are used to seeing for the ship and was especially interesting to observe given OOI uses the Armstrong for a number of our cruises. Other than that, once we were on the ship while it was still in drydock, it really didn’t feel that much different. The ship was very stable and we went through the normal operations of getting the equipment onboard and ready for departure.“
Once loaded, some of the CGSN team headed home to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, while a team of nine WHOI engineers and scientists stayed onboard to execute the test deployments.
[media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/DSC_0258-2-scaled.jpg" link="#"]Not a view many get to see! Armstrong’s Chief Engineer Pete Marczak waving from the stern and CGSN Team members Irene Duran, Jennifer Batryn, and Dee Emrich standing in the North Charleston, SC drydock give a good sense of the size of the RV Neil Armstrong below the waterline. Credit: Rebecca Travis © WHOI.[/media-caption]The process of refloating the ship commenced on February 21 with the filling of the drydock. It took about 6 hours and 134 million gallons of water to raise the Armstrong in the dock to sea level and ready for departure. The movable wall was taken out and the Armstrong maneuvered over to a nearby pier to continue to get ready for sea and OOI work.
Added Ayers, “The Armstrong is a beautiful, capable ship. When she’s out of the water, you get a sense of her size and capabilities. It’s always a wonderful sight.” And one that won’t happen for a while. Armstrong’s next scheduled drydock is in 2025, so for now, the ship is in good working order and ready to continue its job as a scientific workhorse.
[embed]https://vimeo.com/819618715[/embed]
Videos credit: Rebecca Travis © WHOI.
Read MoreWatch Pioneer Relocation Update
Dr. Albert Plueddemann, senior scientist with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and principal investigator for the Coastal and Global Scale Nodes of the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), was the featured speaker at the April 2023 “Science on the Sound” Lecture Series at the Coastal Studies Institute on the ECU Outer Banks Campus. Dr. Plueddemann presented information on an exciting new research ocean observing array headed to the offshore waters of the Outer Banks. Relocation of the Ocean Observatories Initiative Pioneer Array happened on April 20. For those who couldn’t attend in person, the presentation can be watched here.
The OOI Pioneer Array was envisioned as a re-locatable coastal array to investigate physical and biochemical exchange processes on the continental shelf and upper slope.The array infrastructure includes moorings, gliders, and AUVs. The Array was previously sited on the New England Shelf (NES), centered at the shelfbreak south of Martha’s Vineyard, MA.
The new MAB site represents a different environment than the New England Shelf location and offers opportunities to collect data on a variety of cross-disciplinary science topics, including cross-shelf exchange and Gulf Stream influences, land-sea interactions associated with large estuarine systems, a highly productive ecosystem with major fisheries, processes driving biogeochemical cycling and transport, and fresh-water outflows during extreme rain events.
Watch the presentation here.
RCA Science and Data in K12 Classrooms
Dr. Kareen Borders, Executive Director, STEM Instruction and Outreach, South Kitsap School District and Executive Director of West Sound STEM Network and Dr. Deb Kelley, Professor, School of Oceanography, University of Washington and Director of the Regional Cabled Array, Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) teamed up to bring Regional Cabled Array science and data into K12 classrooms in northwest Washington.
After holding a series of curriculum development workshop, classroom units and lessons are now available on the Regional Cabled Array’s Interactive Ocean website. The teaching tools are are the products of a pilot program, funded by the National Science Foundation, that brought together a professional learning community of West Sound STEM Network K12 teacher leaders from northwest Washington school districts, and private and Tribal schools, in partnership with University of Washington, School of Oceanography scientists. They engaged in a series of K12 Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) education curriculum development workshops centered on marine science through use of Regional Cabled Array data.
This cohort of middle and high school teachers developed a series of OOI-integrated STEM Units utilizing stunning imagery from the OOI/ University of Washington Interactiveoceans website and live data from more than 150 instruments streaming from the Regional Cabled Array underwater observatory off the coast of Oregon. The use of rigorous and relevant instructional practices and culturally relevant pedagogical design connects students to technology as a tool for meaningful STEM learning and exploration of STEM career pathways.
The workshops resulted in cloud-based educational packages that cover Plate Tectonics and Volcanoes utilizing the Juan de Fuca Plate and Axial Seamount as prime examples, geohazards focused on seismicity along the Cascadia Subduction Zone and tsunamis, and climate change with an emphasis on heat waves. To access and use the workshop material, visit RCA’s link here.
Read MoreConnecting with International Ocean Observing Networks
The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Program Management Office Principal Investigator Jim Edson is taking OOI data on the road to maximize use of OOI data and build partnerships, wherever feasible. “My intent in making presentations to ocean observing networks around the globe is to help spread the word about OOI so that users take full advantage of the wealth of data being collected.”
Since the beginning of the year, Edson has made presentations at annual meetings of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in Denver and at the Partnership for Observation in the Global Ocean (POGO) in Toulon, France. In early March, he presented and led discussions at a US CLIVAR sponsored workshop in Boulder, before heading to the UK in late March to follow up on connections he made while representing OOI at COP 27.
AMS was a natural for Edson, a meteorologist, who has been an AMS fellow since 2020. He discussed with colleagues there, the many ways that OOI data are being used to constrain air-sea fluxes, including real-life examples of advances in the accuracy of surface fluxes and improved bulk parameterizations.
[media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Jim-and-team-at-PML-scaled.jpeg" link="#"]Tom Bell (left) and James Fishwick (right) gave Jim Edson (middle) a tour of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory facilities during Jim’s return visit there.[/media-caption]Next up was the annual meeting of POGO, where Edson represented both OOI and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where Edson is a Senior Scientist. At POGO, Edson presented an overview of the surface variable, oceanographic, and biogeochemical data collected by the OOI arrays, which researchers are using to advance understanding of the changing ocean. He included examples of research being conducted at the global, coastal and regional arrays. For example, Edson provided a brief description of how OOI data are being used to improve the Coupled Ocean and Atmosphere Experiment (COARE) bulk flux algorithm using a growing global array of momentum and heat fluxes.
March started with another invited presentation to US Climate Variability and Predictability Program (CLIVAR). US CLIVAR is a national research program that fosters understanding and prediction of climate variability with an emphasis on the role of the ocean and its interaction with other elements of the Earth. While there, Edson presented possible OOI data contributions to ongoing modeling efforts. He also described how existing OOI infrastructure could be leveraged in upcoming US CLIVAR field programs.
[media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/PML_Photo-2.jpg" link="#"]Gas Exchange Workshop Attendees at Imperial College in London.[/media-caption]Edson wrapped up his travels with a visit the United Kingdom to give OOI talks, engage with staff, and participate in tours of the facilities with colleagues from the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) in Southampton and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) in Plymouth. In between, he participated in a Gas Exchange Workshop at Imperial College in London where he described the CO2 and pH data being collected by OOI to his colleagues. He used these COP-27-inspired visits to build relationships and explore collaborations with international partners, with the goal of expanding use of OOI data in cutting-edge research and sharing lessons learned with these ocean-observing institutions.
“As a large facility funded by the NSF and an endorsed project of the UN Decade for Ocean Science and Sustainability, the OOI is perfectly positioned to make a difference by sharing our wealth of data to answer pressing issues about the state of the ocean,” said Edson. “I am committed to doing all that I can to help realized OOI’s maximum contribution during this critical time for our planet.”
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Long-Term Monitoring of Gas Emissions at Southern Hydrate Ridge
Identifying the parameters that control or influence seabed methane release is important to refining understanding of the carbon cycle. Data from the Regional Cabled Array are providing time-series required to quantify the flux of methane from the seafloor.
Read MoreRCA Technical Wizards: The Saga of Repairing an RCA Primary Node
Chuck McGuire and Larry Nielson were able to take a cabled power and communications substation that sat inoperable on the dark, cold seafloor of the Pacific for two years and make it work again. The odds were against them. There’s usually less than a 50-50 chance to make a complex technology operational again after this length of inactivity – inactivity compounded by the extreme pressure, cold temperature, and biofouling that occurs on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. But these two engineering geniuses succeeded in repairing, rebuilding, and ultimately reconnecting Primary Node 1B (PN1B), which provides power to the Southern Hydrate Ridge portion of OOI’s Regional Cabled Array (RCA).
[embed]https://vimeo.com/user110037220/pn1b[/embed]It was an arduous, complicated journey, fraught with delays outside of the engineers’ control. The recovery, repair, and reinstallation took two years to complete. We share some of the highlights below for they illustrate the many challenges of operating seafloor cable infrastructure on an active tectonic plate in the Pacific Ocean.
Chuck McGuire, a senior principal engineer, is the chief engineer for the RCA and principal investigator for the engineering portion of the RCA, which is conducted at the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). Larry Nielson is a field engineer three at APL. They have been working on the RCA project since its inception in 2009 (Construction and deployment began in 2013).
When PN1B failed in 2020, the duo was stymied at first. They had to call in a variety of people with different skills to recover, rebuild, and redeploy it.
“Restoration of the PN1B is really a testament to the engineering that went into these nodes, which are good and work well under very harsh conditions, “explained McGuire. The Primary Nodes were designed and built by L3 Maripro with oversight by the APL Engineering team.
A Cable Fault Causes Power Loss
The saga began during RCA’s annual maintenance expedition in summer 2020. Everything was smooth sailing until suddenly the science team aboard the R/V Thomas G. Thompson learned of a cable fault on the southern cable line, which had shorted out. McGuire and team instantly went into troubleshooting mode and determined that the problem was in PN1B, which powers the Southern Hydrate Ridge section of the 900 kilometers of cable that comprise the RCA.
[media-caption path="https://oceanobservatories.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/202108-Recovery-of-Failed-PN1B-scaled.jpg" link="#"]Recovery of failed PN1B. Credit: NSF/OOI/UW.[/media-caption]Luckily, they were able to divert the ship, the R/V Thomas G. Thompson, to the PN1B location to investigate. McGuire was on shore at the Shore Station in Oregon where he could troubleshoot the power system. McGuire worked with a team onboard to use the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) Jason, operated by the National Deep Submergence Laboratory of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, to unplug and plug back in the science interface assembly (SIA) that provides power and communication to secondary infrastructure on the array (e.g. extension cables, junction boxes, instruments, and moorings). The SIA was attached to and powered by PN1B. The SIA wasn’t the cause of the short, so the next step was a visual inspection of the cable with the ROV, tracing the cables back from the node to see if there was any external aggression or damage to that cable. None was seen. The next step was to determine where the power was lost. By controlling the power from the Shore Station and sending “tones” (an oscillating frequency) down the cable, they were able to isolate the affected area. They determined that the PN1B was no longer transmitting any power to the southern cable line running east of the node.
McGuire and Nielson set to figuring out how to replace the damaged node with a spare. A specialized cable ship would be required. A request for proposal was released and the cable ship IT Integrity was secured.
With a cable ship lined up, the engineering team set about reconfiguring the Primary Node and a replacement SIA, which would be plugged into PN1B when both were back on the seafloor. The assembly was complicated and required reconfiguration of all the optics in the SIA’s interior. “Larry was able to get the SIA unassembled and rigged up in a way that made it possible for me to go in and remove and replace the components that needed to be replaced,” explained McGuire. “All of this was unexpected work, which took time, and there was much aggravation. But Larry had some amazing solutions to some interesting rigging problems.”
The two engineers had to rely on their experience to tear down the SIA and then reconstruct it. Their challenge included having to create specialized tools to get into extremely tight spaces. McGuire likened the work to repairing a car engine, where one slowly takes things off, working through the engine until finding the problem. The difference between the Primary Node and a car, however, was that spare parts to fix any issues found weren’t readily available and would have to be manufactured if needed. Here, again, the skill, experience, and tenacity of this duo were called into play. After taking the node apart and putting it back together again, they are now experts.
Their work was driven by a tight schedule needed to get the node and SIA ready for the next RCA recovery and deployment cruise in July 2021. The plan was to have the cable ship work simultaneously with the ROV Jason that was aboard the Thompson. During the 2021 expedition, Jason successfully unplugged and recovered the SIA. The cable ship Integrity then dropped a recovery line next to the node and Jason hooked the recovery line to the node. The cable ship recovered the node, returned it to the dock in Newport, where it picked up the replacement node. All seemed to be going well and on schedule.
While the transit and offloading were taking place, the team had tied the cables to a surface buoy to keep them accessible for reconnection to the new node. When back at the buoy, engineers on the Integrity began the process of jointing—essentially splicing—the tied-off cables and attaching them to new cables connected to the replacement node. When all was connected, the next step was to use a cable winch to lower the cables down to the bottom. Unfortunately, during deployment of the replacement PN1B, the system was damaged which resulted in a shunt fault. Tests indicated the damage was most likely in or very close to the cable termination assembly (CTA) making a repair with the node, at that time, not possible. The replacement PN1B was recovered to deck.
Rather than admit defeat, McGuire came up with the idea to bypass the replacement node and connect the cable downslope from the west to the eastern cable together to provide power and communication to Primary Nodes PN1C and PN1D. McGuire figured that if optical power was too high, communications would fail since PN1B would not be in the system to attenuate the signal. After a few quick calculations, McGuire determined what the attenuation needed to be in the line so that the power wasn’t too high to prevent communication down the cable. The required attenuators were driven down to Newport while the ship headed to port to retrieve the critical parts. The cables were then jointed with the attenuators in the optical circuit, restoring about 65 percent of the power and communications lost to the cable system initially and allowing RCA instruments and moorings at the Oregon Offshore and Oregon Shelf sites to become operational again. The maneuver was innovative and an engineering feat.
Upon returning to the lab, the team faced other challenges. They had to reverse engineer a CTA. Because many of the parts could not be seen without destroying other critical parts, a CT scanner was used to scan its many parts, and point clouds (discrete set of data points in space) were developed. These cloud points were then fed into Solidworks, a software program, to create models of each part that needed to be machined or refurbished.
“CTAs are a very complex component,“ explained McGuire. “They terminate a cable into an object that must retain its watertight integrity at over 3000 meters water depth, while withstanding 35,000 pounds of pulling force and protecting the optical fibers in the cable. Also, there’s not a rock solid on-land way to test its water tight integrity once it’s been built with the cable, ready for deployment.”
In getting ready for the next deployment attempt, the engineering duo encountered other obstacles from COVID-related delivery delays to manufacturers who no longer manufactured needed components. They persevered. The team tore down the replacement node a second time and rebuilt it, with the same deliberate process given the first replacement node. Once completed, they took the replacement node through a complete battery of tests, making sure that it was capable of being powered up, could communicate with the SIA, and provide power to the cabled system. They then shipped the node to Portland to be loaded on a larger cable ship, the C.S. IT Intrepid.
In June 2022, the replacement node was again ready for deployment. McGuire boarded the Intrepid with field engineer Paul Aguilar to oversee deployment. After two days of bad weather, the ship finally was on site. The deployment went without incident except that the node landed 400 meters short of where it was to connect to the cable. To reposition the node, PN1B would have to be lifted back on deck and four kilometers of cable would have to be “peeled” off the seafloor. This would greatly increase the risk to PN1B and the cable, so the team came up with the idea of essentially creating an extension cord to make the cables meet.
“The node was working, the whole system was working except we couldn’t plug anything into it yet, because it was too far away from where it needed to be,” said McGuire. “That was in the middle of June. We had until the end of July, (for the 2022 RCA recovery and deployment expedition) to acquire the parts, build an extension cable and come up with a plan to connect the two cable segments. “
As they do, McGuire and Nielson came up with a plan. By the July departure date, McGuire was aboard the Thompson to oversee the connection. Nielson was onshore to support logistics and attend to any contingent plans that might be needed. The deployment included coming up with a new rigging configuration that required hanging 500 meters of cable off the bottom of the Remotely Operated Platform for Ocean Sciences (ROPOS), a 40 hp Science/Work Class ROV operated by the Canadian Scientific Submersible Facility, using Yale grips every 100 meters or so to allow for proper positioning once the cable was on the sea floor. Using ROPOS, the team guided the end of the cable lit with a transponder and put the end right next to the Primary Node. They then “walked” the ship towards where the cable had to be plugged into the node, essentially laying out a long string in the water to the correct spot.
“And it worked on the first shot, which still amazes me today,” concluded McGuire. “I cried and went to bed.”
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