Deep Profiler V15

APL/RSN engineers attaching the deep profiler vehicle to the mooring line during deployment at the Axial Base site.

Photo Credit: Ed McNichol, Mumbian Enterprises, Inc.

The Deep Profiler at Axial Base docked in its charging station at the bottom of the mooring. The yellow profiler vehicle climbs up and down the mooring wire between the seafloor and the top buoy, collecting oceanographic data on thin layers in the water column.

Photo Credit: NSF-OOI/UW/CSSF, Dive 1742, VISIONS14

The Deep Profiler vertical mooring hosts an instrumented deep wire crawler (McLane) that measures ocean properties from ~3000 m to ~ 200 m water depth. Power and data transfer are provided via an inductive couple. The following instruments are included on the Deep Profiler: CTD, Dissolved Oxygen, 3-D Single Point Current Meter -Temperature, and Fluorometers (CDOM, Chlorophyll-a, Optical Backscatter).

There are three Deep Profiler Vertical Moorings on the Cabled Array, they were installed during VISIONS'14. They are each paired with a Shallow Profiler Mooring and a Seafloor Instrument Array at three Sites: at the base of the Cascadia Margin (Slope Base), in shallower waters along the Oregon margin west of Newport (Endurance Array), and at the base of Axial Seamount near PN3A.