Projects
The OOI was designed to be flexible, with an ability to adapt to changing technology and add instrumentation on to existing platforms. Inherent in its organizational structure with multiple institutions responsible for maintaining and operating the infrastructure, the OOI is also an example of successful collaborative partnerships.
Outlined here are the many projects, funded by both government agencies and private institutions, being conducted in collaboration with the OOI.
3D Acoustic Telescope
The W.M. Keck Foundation awarded the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) a project to design, construct, and test a 3D Acoustic Telescope (3D-AT). Like an optical telescope, the acoustic telescope gives scientists the ability to focus in on individual sounds originating from long distances and direct observation of phenomena including waves, rainfall, and earthquakes that produce telltale acoustic signatures. The instrument is sensitive to a broad range of frequencies, helping to map the complexity of sounds in the ocean and enabling a more nuanced view of both the natural and human-generated underwater soundscape.
The 3D-AT was deployed approximately 1km from the Pioneer Array Offshore Surface Mooring (OSSM), in ~455m water depth. This location is within the Pioneer Array permit area. The 3D-AT sends real-time data to via WIFI to OSSM for transmission back to shore via OSSM’s satellite communications system. The data generated is being made publicly available through the OOI data portal, without an embargo period.
New England Shelf Break Acoustics
The ocean processes of particular interest are shelf-break fronts, thermohaline intrusions, internal waves, etc., along with other significant marine geological features and biological factors, such as submarine canyons, seabed properties, and fish schooling and shoaling. An integrated research approach with strong interdisciplinary collaborations was part of the NESBA project, including theory development, numerical modeling, and field work experiments. The NESBA project did not transmit data via OOI, but rather during the NESBA cruises, the R/V Neil Armstrong was on site to receive acoustic data directly from 3DAT. NESBA data are not available to the public.
Vent Imaging Sonar System
This project makes it possible to monitor, in real time and over long periods of time, the fluids venting from seafloor hydrothermal vents. A Cabled Observatory Vent Imaging Sonar system, capable of long-term monitoring of hydrothermal vent fluid fluxes, was installed on the Regional Cabled Array at the ASHES hydrothermal field in the caldera of Axial Volcano on the Juan de Fuca Ridge. This sonar system images hydrothermal discharge and measures heat transferred by that discharge into the ocean from the subseafloor. It is making it possible to monitor and quantify hydrothermal discharge and the heat transferred by it from rocks below the seafloor to the ocean.
Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation under its Collaborative Research program. Dr. Karen Bemis at Rutgers University is the principal investigator. One goal of the installation is to continue improving the system and developing it into a reliable tool for long-term repeated quantification of hydrothermal activity (fluid flow and heat transport) using acoustic sensing. The sonar system makes synoptic measurements across a significant areal extent of the vent field and can collect and transmit data for periods of up to several years. This greatly reduces the need for extrapolation in the data. In addition to the monitoring, this research is also helping to exploit an innovative method for inversion of acoustic data to estimate the heat flux of diffuse-flow around the vents using a newly developed acoustic method. Deployment of the instrument will run through 2022.
CTD Additions at Regional Cabled Array
This project deploys additional monitoring instruments at Axial Seamount through 2024, which will improve forecasting of the next eruption, modeling of magma supplied and stored within the volcano, and will test ideas about how the deep-sea marine environment is impacted by submarine eruptions. This research will improve our understanding of how volcanoes work and how eruptions can be better forecast (both on land and underwater).
Dr. William Chadwick of Oregon State University serves as principal investigator on this National Science Foundation funded project, which involves modest, cost-effective, and timely enhancements to the instrumentation on the Regional Cable Array. A key element is the deployment of Conductivity, Temperature, Depth (CTD) instruments on the seafloor to measure changes in salinity to test the hypothesis that hydrothermal brines are released in the summit caldera during some eruptions. These enhancements to the monitoring effort at Axial Seamount will be available in time to be deployed during the next eruption at Axial Seamount (currently expected between 2020-2022), which will help to increase our understanding of the shallow magma supply and storage systems at active basaltic volcanoes, the processes that lead to and trigger eruptions, and the impacts of submarine eruptions on hydrothermal systems and chemosynthetic ecosystems.
Rotating Tiltmeter for Marine Geodesy
Measurements of ground deformation due to the motion of the Earth’s tectonic plates are important for scientific research aimed at understanding volcanoes and earthquakes. Tiltmeters measure changes in the tilt or slope of the ground that can occur for example, when a volcano inflates prior to an eruption or when the stresses that cause earthquakes lift up one part of the earth relative to another. This project is developing a new type of tiltmeter that will correct for instrument drift by calibrating the sensor against the Earth’s gravitational force, which can be considered constant at any point on the Earth. The tiltmeter will be deployed on the Regional Cabled Array at Axial Seamount, an active volcano in the Northeast Pacific Ocean. Tilt is being measured by other methods at the site, which allows validation of the new instrument. The data collected by this instrument will be made available to the public and other scientists via the OOI.
Geodetic measurements of seafloor deformation are essential to understand geodynamic processes at oceanic plate boundaries but are quite challenging. The newly developed tiltmeter is based on a high-resolution three-component quartz crystal accelerometer. If the accelerometer is deployed on a stable platform that is coupled to the seafloor, changes in tilt of the horizontal channels of the accelerometer will lead to changes in the measured accelerations with time but so will the drift of the sensors. The approach to correcting the horizontal channels for sensor drift is to conduct a periodic calibration by rotating (or “flipping”) each horizontal channel into the vertical for a short interval to measure the acceleration of gravity, g. Since g is to a high degree of accuracy invariant at any location, changes in the measurement of g between successive rotations can be attributed to sensor drift. This measurement of drift can then be used to correct each horizontal accelerometer channel to obtain a time series of true tilt changes between calibrations. Dr. William Wilcock is principal investigator for this National Science Foundation funded project.
InVADER Platform for Exobiology Research
Funded by NASA a team led by Dr. Pablo Sobron of the Seti Institute and Laurie Barge of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Research Laboratory, are building a 4.6-meter tall platform with three Raman laser systems and two imaging instruments making possible real-time visualization to study underwater hydrothermal systems at Axial Seamount. Their project, known as InVADER (In-situ Vent Analysis Divebot for Exobiology Research), brings next-generation space exploration tools to 1500 meters below the ocean surface. InVADER is making it possible to validate strategies and adaptive missions, and signatures of life in extreme ocean environments. It is conducting hydrothermal fluid and rock sampling, through the development of a Remotely Operated Vehicle rock drill. This sampling is allowing for fluid gas and chemical analyses, microbial genomic characterization, extensive site characterization, machine learning, and the creation of a “virtual” world.
By being resident on-site at the vent, InVADER will capture transient events and provide spatial and temporal access to a deep ocean hydrothermal system. It is expected that the data collected will help determine new strategies to study life in Earth’s oceans and refine methods for how to study habitable vent systems on ocean worlds like Europa or Enceladus in the future.
M3: Acoustic Monitoring of Natural Release of Methane Gas from the Seafloor
The Southern Hydrate Ridge (SHR) is a key cabled site on the Regional Cabled Array, which has attracted numerous national and international investigators. One is M3: Acoustic Monitoring of Natural Release of Methane Gas from the seafloor, a several year-program funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research to quantify methane flux from the Southern Hydrate Ridge RCA site. Professor Gerhard Bohrmann and Dr. Yann Marcon of MARUM at the University of Bremen, Germany, are principal investigators.
The M³ project is monitoring the natural release of methane from the seabed over the long-term (> 2 years), continuously and in real time. To achieve this, it installed two sonar systems at the seafloor to monitor gas bubble emissions at the southern summit of Hydrate Ridge. One rotating multibeam sonar provides the overview of the entire gas and gas-hydrate influenced area. A second high-resolution sonar is quantifying the amount of individual gas streams. The system is providing unprecedented 360-degree imaging of all methane plumes issuing from SHR, as well as the first flux measurements of this methane release.
Related Research
From 2013 through 2019, the National Science Foundation has supported nearly 80 research projects that used OOI data to help answer scientific questions. These projects involved 1953 Principal Investigators at 30+ research institutions, with NSF’s support nearing $51 million.
A complete list of these OOI-related research investigations by array is found below.