Success at Oregon Offshore

Saturday, August 30, 2014
Offshore Shallow Profiler Mooring Completed

Today marked a historic moment for the OOI-RSN, with the successful installation of 1) a large, complex instrument assembly and 2) an instrumented shallow winched profiler on the 13-ft-wide mooring platform at 197-m water depth at the Oregon Offshore Site. This system is a remarkable engineering feat, designed and fabricated by the Applied Physics Lab at the University of Washington. When powered up, the winched system will release an instrumented "Science Pod" that will travel up and down through the water column several times a day making key environmental and water-property measurements along its path. Complementary instruments housed on the platform include sensors to monitor/image zooplankton, currents, ocean acidity, and carbon dioxide and oxygen concentrations. The Oregon Offshore Site is a partnership between the University of Washington and Oregon State University OOI Teams. The OOI teams are all excited to power up this amazing piece of infrastructure and examine data during the testing phase of the program. Ocean Leadership will announce in early 2015 when data are publicly available.