Shallow Profiler V15

Deployment of the 200m platform of the Endurance Oregon Offshore two-legged mooring, which will eventually host a winched shallow profiler and bioacoustic sonar instruments. Two mooring lines with seafloor anchors are attached to the sides of the platform (rather than the usual single mooring line) to add stability to the platform so it can act as the profiler base.

Photo Credit: Skip Denny, APL/UW

ROPOS Dive R1763 was a historical moment, marking the first installation of an RSN Instrument Platform Assembly onto a 2-legged Shallow Profiler Mooring. The instrument platform and mooring was designed and built by the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington as part of the Regional Scale Nodes-Endurance Array effort. The 'PIA' was installed on the platform at the EA Oregon Offshore Site at a water depth of 197 m. Photo credit: NSF-OOI/UW/CSSF; Dive R1763; V14.  

The state-of-the-art Shallow Profiler mooring features a two-legged system that terminates at a 200-m Platform. The 13 ft across platform hosts an instrumented winched Shallow Profiler that travels from 200 m to just below the ocean's surface and a second instrument pod that is stationary on the platform.

The 200-m Platform instruments include the following: pH, Broadband Hydrophone, Fluorometer, CTD, Dissolved Oxygen, 5-beam ADCP, Digital Still Camera, and a 150-kHz ADCP

The Shallow Profiler instruments include the following: CTD, Dissolved Oxygen, Nitrate, pH, Optical Attenuation, Spectral Irradiance, Photosynthetically Active Radiation, Fluorometer - 3 wavelengths, and a Current Meter.

The Shallow Profilers were installed during VISIONS '14 and are each paired with the Deep Profiler and a Seafloor Instrument Array at three study sites: at the base of the Cascadia Margin (Slope Base), in shallower waters along the Oregon margin west of Newport (Endurance Offshore Site), and at the base of Axial Seamount.