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15 pages, 14 figures, 5 tables, The study of the effects of climate change on the marine environment requires the existence of sufficiently long time series of key parameters. The study of these series allows both to characterize the range of variability in each particular region and to detect trends or changes that could be attributed to anthropogenic causes. For this reason, networks of permanent cabled observation systems are being deployed in the ocean. This paper presents a balance of a decade of activity at the OBSEA cabled observatory, as an example of ocean monitoring success and drawbacks. It is not the objective of this article to analyze the scientific and technical aspects already presented by the authors in different publications (Table 4). We will evaluate the overall experience by retracing the different steps of infrastructure deployment and maintenance, focusing on routines for in situ control, damages experienced, breakdowns and administrative constraints by local administrations. We will conclude by providing a set of guidelines to improve cabled observatories scientific outreach, societal projection, and economic efficiency. As a result of this work, a 10-years dataset has been published in Pangaea that is available for the community, This work was supported in part by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (MEC) with the project Redes de sensores submarinosautónomos y cableados aplicados a la monitorización remota de indicadores biológicos under Grant TEC2017-87861-R, and part by Generalitat de Catalunya with the Project Sistemas de Adquisición Remota de datos y Tratamiento de la Información en el Medio Marino (SARTI-MAR) under Grant 2017 SGR 371, With the funding support of the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S), of the Spanish Research Agency (AEI)

Thanks to a fruitful collaboration between Ifremer (Institut francais pour l’exploitation de la mer), Geoazur and CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique), a subsea cabled observatory has been operating offshore Nice (France) since 2015. It is intended to collect measurements of several instruments (seismometer and piezometers) in an area recognized as a natural laboratory for the study of the underlying mechanisms of submarine slope failures. The observatory is made up of two subsea stations, connected to a shore station by an electro-optical cable. All the components of the infrastructure and instruments can be remotely accessed through the internet. The measurements of the instruments are automatically transmitted to data centers. They can be visualized and downloaded on web portals.

This paper describes the design, construction and preliminary test results for a gas-tight serial sampler intended to be deployed at seafloor for long-term operation to take time-series fluid samples from deep-sea environments such as cold seeps, water column and hydrothermal vents. The serial sampler is a modular system that is based on independent and identical sampling modules, which are designed to collect six 160 ml gas-tight fluid samples maintained at high pressure to a depth of 4000 meters. With two working modes, the sampler can be deployed either with seafloor cabled observatory for remote control or as a stand-alone device for autonomous operation. A prototype of the instrument has been constructed and tested on the MARS cabled observatory for two months. The laboratory and field tests proved the success of the design and construction of the serial sampler, and indicated the potential for future ocean sciences.

The Simple Cabled Instrument for Measuring Parameters in-situ (SCIMPI) is a new borehole observatory instrument designed to study dynamic processes below the seafloor. SCIMPI performs time series measurements of temperature, pressure and electrical resistivity at a series of depths, tailored for site-specific scientific objectives. SCIMPI's modular design enables tailoring of the type, depth distribution, and frequency of measurements based on the study goals and sediment characteristics. The first prototype is designed for 300 m below the seafloor in soft sediment and 1500 m b.s.l. However, SCIMPI could be tailored for deeper goals. The instrument can be configured for autonomous or cabled observatory deployments and has successfully undergone a number of tests, including pressure, communications, battery life, and interfacing with other drill-ship equipment. Here we discuss the design of the instrument, its capabilities, and the testing process it has passed through during four years of development. SCIMPI was successfully deployed on the Cascadia margin within the NEPTUNE Canada observatory network during IODP Expedition 341S in May 2013.

OUC-Raman (OUC, Ocean University of China) underwater detection system based on Raman-spectroscopy is designed to operate as instrument node in seafloor cabled observatory network. Considering requirement and standard of seafloor cabled observatory network, this article designs control system for OUC-Raman. It's composed of power management module and control module. Power management module ensures electronic character of OUC-Raman instrument node meeting standard of seafloor cabled observatory network, control module enables shore-based terminal to manipulate underwater system. This control system has redundancy structure to ensure its reliability in seafloor environment. Up to now, OUC-Raman instrument node has received multiple tests with satisfactory results.

This report reviews and characterizes UDNs and describes areas in which standards are being used, where they exist or can be adapted, and other areas in which development and acceptance of standards would contribute to the implementation of UDN for applications of interest. This assessment concludes that the areas in which standards are most lacking is in subsystem and element interfaces, particularly interfaces with Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (UUVs) and recommended practices for application to UDN components and subsystems.

DONET (Dense Oceanfloor Network System for Earthquakes and Tsunamis) is a cabled observation system for long-term and real time monitoring using precision sensors on the seafloor. The development and the manufacturing of DONET2 system were commenced in 2013, and the construction was completed on schedule in 2016. In this paper, the DONET2 system and its installation technologies are introduced.

The existence of fluid in seismogenic zones plays a key role in great earthquakes. Data on electrical conductivity structures obtained by electromagnetic surveys across the great earthquake zones show that the seismically locked zones correspond to low conductive zones. This low conductivity is possibly interpreted as relatively low fluid content in rock or sediment. For more discussion on the role of fluid in earthquake occurrence, we have recently started an electromagnetic and seismological monitoring project using long submarine cables off Toyohashi, in the southwest part of Japan's main island. The cables are located on the Tokai seismogenic zone, where both slow-slipping and locked zones are obvious by GPS observation. We constructed a seafloor observatory at the tip of the western cable, including a seismometer, pressure gauges, a magnetometer, voltmeters, and thermometers. These sensors measure and transfer data on the seafloor environment in real time. The data will be used for passive and active monitoring below the seafloor, including in the Tokai seismogenic zone.

The analogies between space and deep sea motivated the German Helmholtz Association to setup the joint research program ROBEX (ROBotic Exploration under eXtreme conditions). The programme objectives are to identify, develop and verify technological synergies between the robotic exploration of the Moon and of the deep sea. In both space and deep sea research orbiters and AUVs/gliders respectively provide a large set of information on the environment but landers and mobile robots are essential to ground truth the data and validate theories. Within ROBEX the mobility of robots is a vital element for research missions due to valuable science return potential from different sites as opposed to static landers. After 2.5 years of project-time three main mobile systems are prepared for demonstrationmissions, one wheel-based system for planetary missions, one wheel based system for extended deep-sea missions and a caterpillar system for high resolution investigation of small surface regions in the deep sea. In all cases sufficient onboard intelligence was needed. The mobile robots should also be capable of return to a central station for recharging, with the station equipped with enough battery power to allow multiple missions. The intelligent seafloor robot “iCrawler” is presented here, which is based on a tele-operated robot, which has been successfully used within the ONC (Ocean Networks Canada) cabled observatory project since 2010.

This paper introduces the Smart Electronic Interface for Web Enabled Ocean Sensor Systems of the NeXOS project as example how interoperable standards help, to facilitate the creation of an infrastructure for sharing oceanographic observation data and the integration of sensor into marine installations. A given kind of sensor may be deployed on various platforms such as floats, gliders or moorings, and thus must be integrated with different data acquisition systems. Simplifying the integration process in existing or newly established observing systems would have benefit system operators and is important for the broader application of different sensors. Several sensor systems will be developed in NeXOS project for specific technologies and monitoring strategies such as: ocean passive acoustics, ocean optics, and EAF monitoring (Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries), that will provide an integrated, technologically coherent system for multi-scale, multi-parameter monitoring of the oceans. For all these sensors system, the Smart Electronic Interface for Sensors and Instruments (SEISI) is developed, which is a set of standards and functionalities to enable Web-based sharing, discovery, exchange and processing of sensor observations, and operation of sensor systems. The architecture will satisfy international standards, defined by ISO, OGC, and the INSPIRE directive, to enable integration of marine sensors with existing observing systems. The SEISI will provide a multifunctional interface for many types of current sensors and instruments as well as the new multi-parameter sensor systems, and a standard interface for existing observing systems platforms such as: cabled observatories, buoys, gliders or Ferryboxes on ship or vessel of opportunity. To achieve the compatibility with all these platforms, the sensor systems developed in NeXOS based on SEISI will be designed to accomplish two main requirements of these platforms regarding the communication bandwidth and the power consumption.

Future studies of episodic processes in the ocean and earth will require new tools to complement traditional, ship-based, expeditionary science. This will be enabled through the construction of innovative facilities called ocean observatories which provide unprecedented amounts of power and two-way bandwidth to access and control instrument networks in the oceans. The most capable ocean observatories are designed around a submarine fiber optic/power cable connecting one or more seafloor science nodes to the terrestrial power grid and communications backhaul. This paper defines the top level requirements that drive cabled observatory design and the system engineering environment within which a scientifically-capable infrastructure can be implemented. Commercial high reliability submarine telecommunication technologies which will be crucial in the design of long term cabled observatories are then reviewed. The top level architecture of a generic cabled observatory, describing the main subsystems comprising the whole and defining technological approaches to their engineering, is then described, along with some example design choices and tradeoff studies

The objective of the European FP7 project NeXOS (Next generation Low-Cost Multifunctional Web Enabled Ocean Sensor Systems Empowering Marine, Maritime and Fisheries Management) is to develop cost-efficient innovative and interoperable in-situ sensors deployable from multiple platforms to support the development of a truly integrated Ocean Observing System. Therefore, several sensor systems will be developed in NeXOS project for specific technologies and monitoring strategies such as: ocean passive acoustics, ocean optics, and EAF monitoring (Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries), that will provide an integrated, technologically coherent system for multi-scale, multi-parameter monitoring of the oceans. For all these sensors system, NeXOS will develop the Smart Electronic Interface for Sensors and Instruments (SEISI) which is a set of standards and functionalities to enable Web-based sharing, discovery, exchange and processing of sensor observations, and operation of sensor systems. The architecture will satisfy international standards, defined by ISO, OGC, and the INSPIRE directive, to enable integration of marine sensors with existing observing systems. The SEISI will provide a multifunctional interface for many types of current sensors and instruments as well as the new multi-parameter sensor systems, and a standard interface for existing observing systems platforms such as: cabled observatories, buoys, gliders or Ferryboxes on ship or vessel of opportunity. To achieve the compatibility with all these platforms, the sensor systems developed in NeXOS based on SEISI will be designed to accomplish two main requirements of these platforms regarding the communication bandwidth and the power consumption.

Cabled subsea observatories are becoming a common way of monitoring deep sea parameters on a long-term basis. Observatories typically comprise of a long distance high voltage power and data backbone cable onto which several instrumentation spurs are connected. Such systems provide scientists with a way of permanently and directly monitoring large areas of ocean in real-time. By their very nature such systems are scale large projects involving massive investment. Recently, the opportunity arose to establish a low-cost small-scale observatory in the tidal estuary of the river Ythan in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, near to Oceanlab. This paper describes the design and implementation of the system which comprises of a frame, located on the bed of the estuary, onto which are mounted a number of instruments. This is connected to the shore via 500m of combined fibre optic and copper cable.

2013 IEEE International Underwater Technology Symposium (UT), 5-8 March 2013, Tokyo.-- 3 pages, 5 figures, 1 table.-- © 2013 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works, The Citizen Science refers to the public participation in scientific activities and research projects related with environment and its biodiversity are taking advantage of new technologies such us internet and mobile phones with recording capabilities for an easy data collection and sharing. In this paper, we presented a Citizen Science experience with the OBSEA costal-cabled video-observatory, deployed in western Mediterranean in 2009. A local biodiversity survey is going to be conducted by citizens as generic non-experienced users, high-school students, and amateur divers helping to identify and classify fishes appearing within different digital products such as time-lapse images and footages. Accordingly, we implemented a protocol for the web-based species identification supervised by scientists, in order to evaluate the different performances for each group, This work was supported in part by the Generalitat de Catalunya (Departament d’Economia i Coneixement), regional funded project: Visió submarina: un entorn per l'aprenentatge i l'experimentació (contract number 2012ACDC 00060)

In recent years, there have been several major initiatives to install fiber-optic cabled ocean observatories in the United States, Canada, Japan, and Europe. Lighthouse has operated a fiber-optic cabled ocean observing system off the northern coast of the Sultanate of Oman for seven years: the Lighthouse Ocean Research Initiative (LORI) I. In early 2010, a second cabled system was installed farther to the south, LORI II. LORI II is comprised of three, 2500-m-long moored arrays each equipped with eight Doppler current profilers and additional environmental sensors. The moorings sit along the 3000 m bathymetric line, so the uppermost current Doppler profiler uses a low frequency (75 kHz) to capture velocities and acoustic backscatter for the uppermost 500 m of the water column. Lighthouse had significant experience operating a cabled array in shallower water (

Most existing propeller-driven, cruising AUVs operate with a support ship and have an endurance of about one day. However, many oceanographic processes evolve over days or weeks, requiring propeller-driven vehicles be attended by a ship for complete observation programs. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) developed the 105 kg propeller-driven Tethys AUV to conduct science missions over periods of weeks or even months without a ship [1]. Here we describe a three week deployment covering 1800 km at a speed of 1 m/s, supporting sensor power levels averaging 5 watts. Unlike buoyancy driven gliders, Tethys uses a propeller that allows level flight and a variable speed range of 0.5 – 1.2 m/s. The extended endurance enables operations in remote locations like under the ice, across ocean basins in addition to enabling continuous presence in smaller areas. Early success led to the construction of a second Tethys-class AUV with a third in planning. An AUV docking station that can be mated to a cabled observatory or standalone mooring is in development to further extend Tethys endurance.

In this article we describe our experiences with interoperable data management and instrument control standards in the Western Mediterranean Cabled Observatory, OBSEA (www.obsea.es) (Figure 1). The SARTI research group of the Technical University of Catalonia in Vilanova i la Geltru is in charge of OBSEA observatory development. SARTI collaborated with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) to explore interoperability issues within the ESONET project. One of the strong demands of ESONET is that a real-time data web interface from online observatories is needed. In order to do so, online data are urgently needed, and some proposed standards must be applied to ensure interoperability between instruments and data of multiple European observatories.

Recently the ANTARES Neutrino telescope's Infrastructure in the deep Mediterranean Sea, has been extended by a Secondary Junction Box. The main emphasis has been to provide basic power and communications capability for new scientific cabled observatories. This new infrastructure provides unprecedented amounts of power and two-way bandwidth to access and control instrument networks in the oceans. This new development allows cabled observatory to connect the seafloor to the Internet via real-time, two-way highspeed communications. This design gives researchers new capabilities beyond the reach of traditional oceanography. Ocean scientists can run deep-water experiments from labs and universities anywhere around the world. Three different underwater observatories are already been connected at this Secondary Junction Box. This paper presents this new Infrastructure which has been deployed by the R/V Pourquoi Pas? and connected by the IFREMER's ROV VICTOR6000. After a technical description of the system, we detailled an overview of the complete deployment at sea.

Abstract Scientific cabled observatory systems have been deployed around the world with significantly increased capabilities over the last five years. The concept and rationale for cabled ocean observatories is introduced with detail on their function as modern and powerful tools used to understand a broad range of ocean science objectives. In addition to science, other applications are discussed, such as site and equipment monitoring for tidal and wave based renewable energy projects. Similarly, the same technology can be applied to oil and gas production (monitoring, control and intervention), along with port and coastal security surveillance. The paper provides an overview of cabled observatory elements with three cabled observatory projects described as examples. It describes the various features and capacities that each system offers to its users. The paper introduces a modular subsea uninterruptable power supply capable of providing 150kWhr of capacity per module. This system can be used in conjunction with cabled observatories to provide load leveling and guaranteed data collection in the event of a cable fault. The paper concludes with applications for cabled observatory systems related to environmental monitoring and well head control in the oil and gas industry. SECTION 1 - CABLED OBSERVATORY OVERVIEW I. INTRODUCTION A cabled ocean observatory is a subsea infrastructure that can stretch for hundreds of kilometers along the ocean floor. Each observatory provides power and communications to arrays of distribution nodes located on the sea floor. The nodes are linked together with telecommunications cable that supplies electrical power and fiber optic communications. Each node provides multiple connection points allowing a wide variety of sensors and other instruments to be interfaced to the system. Internet based communications allows data to be securely routed from each of the node to the user's facility. For the first time, scientists and engineers have access to real-time continuous data from the ocean, right to their office. Cabled observatories are built from a number of modular building blocks, which are described in the following sections. As each application has different requirements, the cabled observatory modules can be arranged in different topologies, with different features. Figure 1 shows an overview of the key modules and an example of how these items may be connected together. II. CABLE OBSERVATORY MODULES A. Shore Station Power and communications is often supplied to a cabled observatory from a purpose built shore station. The shore station provides the appropriate ocean access for the cable landing, power feed equipment (PFE) and media converters to link the subsea fiber to the Internet. A dedicated data back haul maybe required. An uninterruptable power supply (UPS) and data storage can also be included here to improve the system availability.

International audience; Submarine cabled networks are designed to collect valuable data in geophysics, geochemistry, biology, or oceanography. Unfortunately, the development of such a network is expensive and needs complex subsea infrastructures. Once in place, a cabled network cannot be easily relocated. The current cost of cables and their installation are one of the major obstacles to these networks deployment. On the one hand, these cables are necessary to provide power supply and communication data, and on the other hand they drastically reduce the possibilities to extend the cabled observatory network in order to reach a closed area of significant interest. This is why, to address this issue, we propose a quasi-all-optical architecture to easily extend multidisciplinary cabled networks or to create a dedicated submarine hydrophone or seismometer network. This solution consists of using only a single fiber optic to transmit both the energy, required to supply the instrument, and the data, exchanged between the shore station or equivalent. In this paper, we present our proposed architecture, and we discuss its feasibility thanks to experimental results.

23 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables, The development and deployment of sensors for undersea cabled observatories is presently biased toward the measurement of habitat variables, while sensor technologies for biological community characterization through species identification and individual counting are less common. The VENUS cabled multisensory network (Vancouver Island, Canada) deploys seafloor camera systems at several sites. Our objective in this study was to implement new automated image analysis protocols for the recognition and counting of benthic decapods (i.e., the galatheid squat lobster, Munida quadrispina), as well as for the evaluation of changes in bacterial mat coverage (i.e., Beggiatoa spp.), using a camera deployed in Saanich Inlet (103 m depth). For the counting of Munida we remotely acquired 100 digital photos at hourly intervals from 2 to 6 December 2009. In the case of bacterial mat coverage estimation, images were taken from 2 to 8 December 2009 at the same time frequency. The automated image analysis protocols for both study cases were created in MatLab 7.1. Automation for Munida counting incorporated the combination of both filtering and background correction (Median- and Top-Hat Filters) with Euclidean Distances (ED) on Red-Green-Blue (RGB) channels. The Scale-Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) features and Fourier Descriptors (FD) of tracked objects were then extracted. Animal classifications were carried out with the tools of morphometric multivariate statistic (i.e., Partial Least Square Discriminant Analysis; PLSDA) on Mean RGB (RGBv) value for each object and Fourier Descriptors (RGBv+FD) matrices plus SIFT and ED. The SIFT approach returned the better results. Higher percentages of images were correctly classified and lower misclassification errors (an animal is present but not detected) occurred. In contrast, RGBv+FD and ED resulted in a high incidence of records being generated for non-present animals. Bacterial mat coverage was estimated in terms of Percent Coverage and Fractal Dimension. A constant Region of Interest (ROI) was defined and background extraction by a Gaussian Blurring Filter was performed. Image subtraction within ROI was followed by the sum of the RGB channels matrices. Percent Coverage was calculated on the resulting image. Fractal Dimension was estimated using the box-counting method. The images were then resized to a dimension in pixels equal to a power of 2, allowing subdivision into sub-multiple quadrants. In comparisons of manual and automated Percent Coverage and Fractal Dimension estimates, the former showed an overestimation tendency for both parameters. The primary limitations on the automatic analysis of benthic images were habitat variations in sediment texture and water column turbidity. The application of filters for background corrections is a required preliminary step for the efficient recognition of animals and bacterial mat patches, The present work was developed in the context of the following Research Projects funded by: the Spanish Ministry for Science and Innovation-MICINN (RITFIM, CTM2010-16274), the Italian Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Politics-MIPAAF (HighVision, DM 19177/7303/08), the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund (NEPTUNE Canada and VENUS project; University of Victoria), and an NSERC Canada Strategic Networks grant to the Canadian Healthy Oceans Network (CHONe). J. Aguzzi is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Ramón y Cajal Program (MICINN). M. Matabos conducted this study during a post-doctoral fellowship funded by the Canadian Healthy Ocean Network (CHONe). K. Robert benefited from scholarships from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada), the Fonds du Québec de Recherche—Nature et Technologies and the Bob Wright Foundation (University of Victoria), We acknowledge support by the CSIC Open Access Publication Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI)

Selection and integration of instruments for cabled seafloor observatories present challenges which can differ significantly from traditional autonomous, short-term deployments of individual devices. Both NEPTUNE Canada and instrument providers have learned a great deal from the experiences of specifying, procuring, testing, integrating and deploying complex combinations of seafloor instruments on its observatory in the Northeast Pacific. The current NEPTUNE Canada science suite (i.e., exclusive of the network infrastructure) consists of 130 instruments (and many more sensors), 170 cables of various types, 12 Junction Boxes and 636 connectors.

A prototype system for connecting remote instruments to a cabled observatory is described. The system consists of base-station modems and a data acquisition system attached to the MBARI MARS observatory in 900 m water off Monterey, California, plus remote modems used for link testing. The objective of the system is to provide a drop-in capability to connect sensors on the sea-floor or on sub-sea moorings to a cabled node that would otherwise require an ROV to make a hard-wired connection. While ROV installations of sensor-to-node cables are practical for many instruments, the acoustic connection is a way of lowering the barrier to general access of cabled nodes.

Ocean Renewable Energy Devices are in various stages of development around the world. To date, very few of these devices are producing power at a commercial level. Many are at the demonstration level, and many more are at the drawing board and scale model test level.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Underwater Power Cable Design Power Transmission Requirements Armor and External Protection Design Underwater Power Cable Manufacture Cable Transport Underwater Power Cable Installation This chapter contains sections titled: References

NEPTUNE Canada (North-East Pacific undersea networked experiments) and VENUS (Victoria experimental network under the sea) will be the world's first multi-node cabled ocean observatories, with installation in 2006-08. The abundant power, high bandwidth communications, and hundreds of sensors delivering data and imagery in real or near real time will transform both our acquisition of knowledge and our understanding of the ocean environment. With the world's oceans in a state of crisis, the development of cabled observatory technology is most timely and will offer a data archive of unparalleled importance for new discoveries.

Over the last three years, the University of Victoria and OceanWorks have designed built and installed the world's first multi node advanced cabled observatory. Located in Saanich Inlet and in the Strait of Georgia on the West Coast of Canada, the Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea (VENUS) cabled observatory provides power and communications to numerous under water oceanographic instruments and has been continuously delivering near real time data to scientist since February 2006. This paper describes the VENUS Project life from concept to delivery of science data. Details of the architecture, design, capabilities, deployment and commissioning of both observatories will be provided along with lessons learnt. An overview of some of the data management and usage issues is provided.

A new cabled observatory was constructed off Toyohashi in central Japan using a pair of decommissioned underwater telecommunication cables. While providing electric power and communication line to the underwater observatory, the cables will be used as a long active antenna to monitor the electro-magnetic properties of the Earth's crust that are related to water contents. To secure a safe deployment of the junction unit at the end of the cable, we conducted computer simulations before the deployment. The junction units must usually be placed exactly as planned. This paper presents that the simulation results coincide with the actual construction result.

This article briefly discusses, through examples, power and communication architectures for cabled subsea observatories. Technological histories of the architectures as current developments in this field are also overviewed.

An infrastructure for global, regional, and coastal sub-sea observatories is being planned to support individual and networked sensors. The main emphasis has been to provide basic power and communications capability at "primary" nodes; less has been given to the sensor network infrastructure that extends the capability of the observatory into the full three-dimensional volume of interest. Secondary cabled and junction boxes are needed to extend the horizontal reach by tens to hundreds of kilometers from the primary nodes; moorings up into the water column and boreholes into the sediments and crust are necessary to extend the vertical reach. The support infrastructure must include navigation and communications systems, mobile platforms such as free-swimming autonomous undersea vehicles, and bottom rovers that carry sensors and provide data and energy "tanker" service. The requirements for these various network elements and possible solutions are discussed, with an emphasis on the design of a specific mooring for the ALOHA Observatory north of Oahu. This subsurface mooring supports a full-water-column moored profiler with a docking station that transfers power and data, enabling adaptive sampling. The subsurface float at 200 m provides a ROV-serviceable platform for near surface instrumentation, such as an upward looking acoustic Doppler current profiler and a winched sensor system.

As a result of field experience and recent activities with academic institutes, industry has developed robust and novel solutions for future generation cabled observatories. These solutions include the high availability of electrical power and data communications delivered by a combination of commercially off the shelf equipment and specialized equipment built to submarine telecommunication standards.

Despite the recent telecom downturn, the knowledge base for undersea cable transmission technology has progressed. The next generation of undersea systems and upgrades will benefit from concepts now emerging from system research.

The concept of a next generation scientific cable network surrounding the Japanese Islands is presented. The proposed cable network has the following outstanding features: (1) continuous monitoring and power feeding, (2) covering interdisciplinary fields, (3) mesh-like cable configuration surrounding the Japanese Islands, (4) 20-50 km observatory intervals, (5) plural sensors connected in each observatory, (6) exchangeability of sensors for maintenance and replacement, (7) robustness against faults, (8) high cost performance. This paper mainly discusses the concept of the cable network and the power feeding system.

An international consortium is currently collaborating to develop a regional-scale submarine cabled observatory with unprecedented capabilities. The goal is to provide a 4D observing capability covering the entire Juan de Fuca tectonic plate for current, next and future generation instruments and experiments over a planned 30 year design life. The scope of this project dictates a systematic engineering approach to ensure the delivered system meets the user's requirements in a cost effective manner. This paper will discuss how the NEPTUNE system engineering team is using and adapting standard system engineering tools, techniques and processes not typically used in the oceanographic research community to the unique circumstances associated with the project. A major challenge of the design effort is developing a system with high enough reliability to balance operational and initial capital construction casts in order to minimize life cycle cost. An overview of our reliability engineering process and some initial results will also be discussed.

Since the mid 1990's, the growth in subsea exploration and expansion of scientific cabled observatories have resulted with the increased usage and desire for reliable subsea cabling and connections. Following is a discussion and overview with considerations that should be made when specifying and selecting interconnected cabling systems for subsea applications. Attention is given to the advances in deepwater, high voltage, and high fiber count interconnection technologies. Considering these new advances will allow for future discussions involving the approaches that may be taken when configuring and installing science projects that may enable new developments within the oceanographic community.

To meet data collection requirements for modern ocean science research, new types of infrastructure are needed that are capable of providing long-term, high-resolution observation of critical environmental parameters. The Ocean Sciences Division of the U.S. National Science Foundation plans to initiate construction of an integrated ocean observatory network to provide the oceanographic research and education communities with new modes of access to the ocean. The ocean observatories initiative has three primary elements: 1) a regional cabled network consisting of interconnected sites on the seafloor spanning several geological and oceanographic features and process, 2) several relocatable deep-sea buoys that could also be deployed in harsh environments such as the Southern Ocean, and 3) new construction or enhancements to existing systems leading to an expanded network of coastal observatories. Just as the U.S. Academic Research fleet is accessible to all investigators, this initiative will begin building a network of ocean observatories to facilitate the collection of long time-series data sets needed to understand the dynamics of biological, chemical, geological and physical process.

Summary form only given. Sustained ocean observing systems hold the promise of revolutionizing ocean related science within this decade. Enable by technological advances and further fueled by societal need, a wide range of ocean and earth observing systems are being planned, proposed, deployed and operated. Both envisioned and existing observation systems emphasize real-time datasets for event response and adaptive sampling, well-sampled spatial and temporal contexts for limited-duration or process-study experiments, and sustained operation to observe long-term trends and capture rare episodic events. Collaborative science is similarly emphasized, with the widespread availability of increasingly multi-disciplinary datasets stimulating previously unfeasible cross-correlation analyses in the search associations or causal relationships. Extensive observations are increasingly being used in combination with interdisciplinary models through growing model development, coupling, validation and assimilation activities. The rapidly expanding observation and modeling capabilities are enabling scientists to consider an entirely new set of interdisciplinary science questions. In turn, the new questions can be used to guide and prioritize implementation strategies for upgrading existing, and deploying new, observatories. The scientific cabled observatories for time series (SCOTS) report is a significant part of the implementation process for one specific type of ocean observatory. It documents community input on the scientific questions best served by regional networks of the cabled observatories in three targeted domains - the open ocean, geologic plates, and coastal. The report is directed primarily toward those charged with the development of observatory implementation plans that address the priority science. This talk will report on both of these efforts, first by summarizing the experience of existing U.S. cabled observatories, and second by outlining the prioritized science plans.

Summary form only given. The capabilities of autonomous underwater vehicles have been steadily increasing in recent years, and they are beginning to make critical contributions to seagoing scientific programs. In many cases, AUVs now operate for extended periods completely independent of a surface vessel, freeing the vessel to perform other tasks. However, nearly all of this work is conducted in a conventional expeditionary style: AUVs are deployed, operate until their on-board energy is consumed, then return to the surface for recovery. Between dives their batteries are recharged, a new mission program is downloaded, and a number of maintenance checks are performed. Cable subsea observatories can act as bases for long-term deployment of AUVs, giving them unprecedented capabilities for both extended time series observations and the ability to respond to events. A cabled observatory can provide the high-speed data links required for specifying missions and uploading large data sets as well as the power to recharge batteries. In this paper, we present a series of technological steps to extend our present expeditionary capability to a more sustained presence, which could culminate in observatory-based AUVs. We outline a series of demonstrations; each expected to return new and interesting scientific data that extend our AUV capability incrementally, culminating in a fully autonomous, long-term deployable AUV system.

In this contribution, we describe the seabed cabled observatory networks managed by Ocean Networks Canada (ONC). The focus is on the hydrophone hosting capabilities of ONC's advanced science infrastructure and on the assets already in place, together with their scientific objectives. We describe the data acquisition and archival principles and methods, as well as the derived products available to users. We also elaborate on the concerns of the United States and Canadian Navies with quasi real-time, public data and on the mitigation measures in place to balance security needs with the scientific and public safety goals of the instrumentation. Finally, we describe the potential for instrument development and testing that ONC offers on its networks.

In an effort to increase communication and collaboration between members of the Acoustical Society of America and the American Fisheries Society, a joint workshop focusing on the integration of biological and physical elements in ecosystem research, current policy and regulations, and applications of acoustic technologies developed field use will be held Thursday and Friday during the conference. Topics of interest in the workshop include the following: ecosystem based resource management, cabled observatories, monitoring renewable energy sites, acoustic species discrimination, statistical analysis for fisheries assessment, progress in fish tagging, acoustical models for fisheries assessment habitat inventory, detecting, and monitoring episodic events: natural and anthropogenic, active and passive assessment, and quantitative assessments in noisy environments. Ocean observatories is an explicit topic of interest in the workshop, but it can serve as an integrating theme that potentially expands the scope a...

Funding was provided by the IRIS Consortium under sub-award agreement No. 0169 and by the W.M. Keck Foundation through their Technology Innovation Awards.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has started the Ocean Research Interactive Observatories Network (ORION) program for research‐driven sustained observations. The core infrastructure will consist of: (1) a coarse global array of buoys, (2) a regional cabled observatory in the northeast Pacific (with Canada already funded for the northern portion), and (3) coastal observatories. Seafloor junction boxes providing power and communications are a common enabling feature. The ORION Workshop (Puerto Rico, 4–8 January 2004) developed science themes that can be addressed utilizing this infrastructure. Acoustics enable much of the science. The use of acoustics to sense the synoptic 3‐D/volumetric ocean environment was found to be ubiquitous through most ORION working groups. One reason for this is the relative transparency of the ocean to sound and the opaqueness to electromagnetic radiation. Participants at the workshop formed an Acoustics Working Group. Based on its report, we review the science and technical...

In today's Internet age information flows across continents as easily as it flows across the office. With so many “point and click” virtual connections, it's easy to forget that the world's communications needs are made possible by real systems, based on fiberoptic cables.1,2 This comes as no surprise to those of us in the optics community; however, many others underestimate the importance of undersea fiberoptic cables for intercontinental telecommunications. The earth’s continents are connected with a web of undersea fiberoptic cables that join the world’s major population centers. Anyone who makes international phone calls, sends international faxes, or simply surfs the web at sites in other continents uses undersea fiberoptic cables.

Two high strength, low weight, prototype, electromechanical cables have been developed for use in remote control of undersea systems operating to depths of 20,000 feet. Both cables incorporate tension members of KEVLAR-49 as the load-bearing section. Other cable physical properties include: Cable One Cable Two Diameter (in) 1.20 0.86 Weight in Air (lb/l000') 802 254 Weight in Seawater (lb/1000') 351 -4.5 Design Strength (lb) 77,000 5200 Design details are given for each cable. Recommendations are made of the most effective ways to utilize KEVLAR-49 in undersea cables, as well as hazards to be avoided with this new material.

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