Ocean Exploration Now For Everyone Web Connected

Ocean Exploration Now For Everyone Web Connected



Aug. 2007  - "No longer will ocean exploration 
and research be limited to scientists. Everyone with a connection to the 
web, including students, teachers, decisionmakers and the general public, 
will be able to have access to these undersea networks, enthused Mark 
Abbott today. 
As dean of Oregon State University's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric 
Sciences, Abbott is participating in a newly funded academic partnership 
to develop, install and operate the coastal and global components of the 
National Science Foundation's Ocean Observatories Initiative. He says the 
project "will transform ocean research and education." 
The academic partnership led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 
of Massachusetts today was awarded a $97.7 million contract by the Joint 
Oceanographic Institutions, JOI, a private, nonprofit consortium of 31 
oceanographic research institutions that manages large-scale marine 
research programs. 
The partnership also includes the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at 
the University of California, San Diego. This award completes the 
management team to construct and implement the $331.5 million Ocean 
Observatories Initiative Network. 
The Ocean Observatories Initiative Network is the U.S. science community's 
contribution to an international effort to establish a Global Ocean 
Observing System. 
A major goal of the global observatory is to better understand and predict 
the impact of climate change on the interlinked ocean-atmosphere system, 
and on marine ecosystems, biodiversity and community structure, especially 
in remote, poorly sampled parts of the world's ocean. 
"This initiative is a major investment that will transform our 
understanding of the ocean," said Joint Oceanographic Institutions 
President Steven Bohlen. "It will contribute to tremendous advances in our 
understanding of how Earth works." 
Each of the three partners will contribute scientific and engineering 
expertise to the development of a range of innovative moored buoys, cabled 
nodes, and autonomous vehicles that will provide users with data in 
real-time or near-real-time. Users will be able to remotely control their 
instruments and construct virtual observatories tailored to their 
scientific needs. 
"By exploiting technological advances in the fields of in situ sensors, 
autonomous vehicles, and cyberinfrastructure, including telecommunications 
and networking, the OOI will revolutionize the way we conduct 
oceanography," said Jim Luyten, acting president and director of Woods 
Hole Oceanographic Institution. 
"These systems will provide us the ability to continuously monitor the 
ocean over time and space," Luyten said. 
"The ability to make long-term measurements in the coastal and global 
ocean provides an opportunity to truly understand ocean variability, 
hazards, and climate change in response to natural events and human 
activity," said Tony Haymet, director of the Scripps Institution of 
Oceanography. 
The team will design and deploy global buoys to address planetary-scale 
problems in critical high latitude locations in the Northern and Southern 
hemispheres. 
Initially, permanent and transportable arrays of buoys and autonomous 
vehicles will be deployed off the Pacific Northwest and Mid-Atlantic Bight 
to study coastal processes and to monitor changes in coastal systems. 
The aim of the coastal arrays is to understand complex coastal ecosystems 
and their critical role in the ecology and biogeochemistry of the world's 
oceans, coastal hazards such as storms and harmful algal blooms, and the 
impact of climate change on the coastal ocean. 
Raytheon will provide project management and systems engineering support, 
and Technip and Science Applications International Corporation will assist 
in the design of a high-performance moored platform for the OOI Network. 
The initial 67 month contract is valued at $97.7 million and contains 
options for five years of operation and maintenance, which would bring 
total funding to more than $200 million. 
In May, JOI announced awards to the University of Washington to lead the 
regional components of the U.S. initiative and to the University of 
California-San Diego, to lead the cyberinfrastructure component. 

---