Live Sensing of a Dynamic Ocean System with NEPTUNE Canada

NEPTUNE Canada is the first operational deep-sea regional cabled ocean observatory worldwide. Since the first data began streaming to the public in 2009, instruments on the five active nodes along the 800 km cable loop have gathered a time-series documenting three years in the northeastern Pacific. Observations cover the northern Juan de Fuca tectonic plate from ridge to trench and the continental shelf and slope off Vancouver Island. More instruments continue to be added to this technically advanced system, which provides continuous power and high bandwidth communication to measure, in real-time, the physical, chemical, geological, and biological oceanographic conditions of the dynamic earth-ocean system. During these three years significant challenges have been overcome and currently we have more than 70 instruments with hundreds of sensors reporting data in real-time. Salient successes are the first open-ocean seafloor to sea-surface vertical profiling system, three years of operation of Wally—a seafloor crawler that explores a hydrate mound, and a proven resilient cable design that can recover from trawler hits and major equipment meltdown with minimal loss of data. A network wide array of bottom mounted pressure recorders and seismometers recorded the passage of three major tsunamis, numerous earthquakes and frequent whale calls. At the Endeavour segment of the Juan de Fuca ridge high temperature and diffuse vent fluids were monitored and sampled using novel equipment, including high resolution active acoustics instrumentation to study plume dynamics at a massive sulfide hydrothermal vent. Also, four 300 m high deep sea cabled moorings were placed in the precipitous bathymetry of the 2200 m deep axial valley. A three dimensional imaging system monitoring the growth of a sponge complex on the 20 m deep Folger pinnacle in the wave zone offshore Vancouver Island completes the picture of this northeast Pacific dynamic ocean system from an active spreading ridge, down to the abyss, along the hydrate-rich slope, and up to the coast.;