Strapped for cash and a year behind schedule, a University of Victoria-led undersea lab project is still intent on powering up.

After an 800-kilometre circle of fibre optic cable was laid two years ago off Vancouver Island's west coast, NEPTUNE Canada (North-East Pacific Time-Series Undersea Networked Experiments) is now ready to drop power boxes and sensor instruments along the ocean route.

But without further funding, the $120 million-plus project remains in jeopardy, with only enough guaranteed money to carry it through 2010. The federal government's Canadian Foundation for Innovation has provided NEPTUNE with $40 million in startup funds since 2003. While the foundation insists it doesn't distribute operational funds directly, it has allowed Neptune to use 30 per cent of its grants for such costs.

But the foundation's CEO says a source for long-term operational funding is in the works.

"There is an understanding that we have in Canada about 15 large science facilities like NEPTUNE that are truly world class," Dr. Eliot Phillipson said. "They're very important to the country because in many ways they are our entrée into international science … There is a general understanding that together we need to ensure their continuing operations. There is agreement that we need to do this and one way or another, I am confident we will find a way to provide their ongoing operating needs."

If federal agencies and scientists could agree on a funding system it could be set up in less than a year, he said.

In the meantime, a cable ship loaded with equipment developed by France-based cable giant Alcatel-Lucent, is headed beyond Vancouver Island to lower five power boxes, or nodes, that will not only run 130 different instruments, but will send data back to a Port Alberni research station.

This step of the project is a year behind schedule, project director Chris Barnes said, adding that the prototype cable network power houses took longer than expected to produce.

"Some tests that you run to make sure things are working can take many weeks or months to go through, and if there's a failure, you have to start again and it just eats up time," he said.

Laying cable, power sources and instruments at depths to 2,600 metres is a logistical and financial challenge. While burying cable two summers ago across an ocean terrain that includes crevices, ravines, volcanoes and methane vents, Alcatel-Lucent's cable ship had to pull up and repair the cable several times.

Although the company is now familiar with the terrain, this summer's six-week trip to lower power boxes will still be a nail-biter, said the company's vice-president Arnaud de Panafieu. The 140-metre Lodbrog, with a crew of about 70, will have to make five trips out and back to place the 13-tonne nodes, because they can't be carried in one go.

The Lodbrog is normally stationed in Taiwan, carrying out routine maintenance on underwater cable lines. Lowering enormous equipment off Vancouver Island is a big change for the ship and crew, Panafieu said.

"Usually when we put in cables and repeaters, it doesn't matter much, but here with bulky objects that are going through the splash zone, it will be quite challenging – the environment is extremely hostile."

To aid with the drops, Atlantis – a research ship owned by the same company that retrieved computer files from B.C. Ferries' Queen of the North – will lower a remotely operated vehicle to guide equipment into place. A third ship from the University of Washington will also be used.

NEPTUNE's associate project director, Mairi Best, said the network, which connects together in Bamfield, will serve multiple purposes.

As well as providing real-time information about earthquakes or tsunamis, it will generate practical data about the sea world "with hydrophones listening to anything from marina mammals like whales, to sub-marine land slides - the noises under the sea."

Although NEPTUNE is a first for the world, Japan, Taiwan and Europe are honing in. As well, the U.S. is moving forward with a $400-million ocean observatory initiative – one area covered will be the south Juan de Fuca plate.

Barnes points out the Canadian advantage:

"We're very much ahead of the Japanese, Taiwanese and the Americans. They might put in three nodes by 2015 (at Juan de Fuca.) That's five years after us."

vmoreau@saanichnews.com