NEPTUNE launches high-tech eyes and ears

A team of 50 ocean scientists, technicians and their support crew were shaking off their sea legs after one month on the ocean.

The project was to install a wide variety of sensors and probes along the seafloor off Vancouver Island as far as 2,700 metres below. It is the first deep-sea investigation of its size and it promises to deliver one of the most comprehensive looks at what goes on beneath the reach of divers.

Battling some rough seas and seasickness, everybody “were real troopers,” said Mairi Best, NEPTUNE Canada’s associate director of science, on her second day back at her University of Victoria office.

“We’re thrilled with the success of the installation cruise,” Best said last week. “Over 80 per cent of our equipment is working well (which) is a very good proportion when you’re trying to get stuff working in the sea.”

NEPTUNE Canada, based at UVic, is a collaboration between ocean-related scientists from Canada and around the world, across many disciplines. The scope of projects they’re investigating range from how gas hydrate forms to how nutrients cycle through the food web.

“You need to capture all the pieces of the puzzle,” Best said. For instance, temperature probes will be working in concert with cameras, hydrophones and sensors to measure chemicals, ocean currents, chlorophyll levels and marine mammal calls. “It’s having all these different (measurements) in the same place on a continuous basis and being able to put the whole story together.”

Installing instruments at the bottom of the ocean presents many challenges, however.

First, instruments need fuel to operate and a means to communicate their data to shore. In August, NEPTUNE Canada installed the last components attached to an 800-kilometre fibre optic cable spanning the sea floor along many types of ocean environments. Along it, five nodes provide power and Internet to any instrument NEPTUNE’s scientists choose to plug in.

Because divers can’t physically do the delicate installation, a subsea robot needs to do the work for them.

On board the ship, a team of pilots maneuvered a locally-designed remotely operated vehicle, called ROPOS, with a type of joy stick.

“It looks a bit like a video game console but with some very complex manipulators,” Best said. Between each installation, technicians brought the SUV-sized robot on board to reconfigure it for the next job.

Also on board the ship were a team of communications and logging specialists who twittered and blogged every step to the world. Scientists who couldn’t be on board stayed connected through web chats and, and over-the-web phone lines.

Come December, the data from all the underwater instruments will start streaming live through the NEPTUNE Canada website.

While some of the more technical data won’t mean much to the average person without analysis, the song of a whale will be immediately meaningful to everyone, Best said. “What I’m really hoping is that this will be a way of making the oceans real to everybody.”

rholmen@saanichnews.com