Washington Offshore Surface Mooring (CE09OSSM)

The Coastal Endurance Washington Offshore Surface Mooring is located on the Continental Slope, approximately 550 meters deep. The Continental Shelf-Slope area off the Washington coast is a highly productive, dynamic upwelling environment. Upwelling brings nutrients to the surface sparking primary production and fueling the food web. In recent years, upwelling has also brought onto the shelf hypoxic, low oxygen, waters that can be harmful to organisms in the area. By sampling in this area, the OOI seeks to gain better insight into upwelling dynamics of this system.

Like other coastal moorings, the Coastal Endurance Washington Offshore Surface Mooring is specifically designed to examine coastal-scale phenomena and withstand the challenging conditions of shallow coastal environments, including large tidal fluctuations. The Surface Mooring contains instruments attached to a Surface Buoy floating on the sea surface, Near Surface Instrument Frame 7 meters below the surface, and a Seafloor Multi-Function Node (MFN) located on the seafloor. The Surface Buoy provides a platform on which to secure surface instruments above the sea surface, below the sea surface, and across the interface between. Additionally the Surface Buoy contains an antenna to transmit data to shore via satellite.

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.