Ocean exploration is as exciting and complex as traveling into outer space. It involves cool tech, hard science, daring innovation, and a large team of highly qualified personnel. And thanks to underwater cameras and telepresence technology, the public can participate in Ocean Networks Canada’s (ONC) quest to know the ocean.
Starting on 28 April, Expedition 2017: Wiring the Abyss is ONC’s first major expedition of the year. This ten-day operation involves a team of 35 scientists, engineers, technicians, and data specialists who will live aboard the Canadian Coast Guard Vessel John P. Tully...
How do you study a moving wall of water and sediment the size of a truck traveling at 30 kilometers per hour? A paper about a spectacular Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) dataset was recently selected as one of science journal Sedimentology’s Top 10 articles of 2016, as an example showcasing “good practice, innovative approaches, and noteworthy advances of our science.” Congratulations to marine geoscientist Gwyn Lintern (Figure 1) and colleagues from Natural Resources Canada who published this paper on the tumbling delta dynamics laboratory platform.
The Canadian Coast Guard Ship John P. Tully in Saanich Inlet.
Ocean Networks Canada's tenth annual expedition season began on 28 April 2016 with an 8-day cruise to maintain the ocean observing instrumentation and platforms in Saanich Inlet and the Strait of Georgia. The Canadian Coast Guard Ship John P. Tully and the ITB Subsea Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) Oceanic Explorer supported the recovery, repair and deployment of seafloor installations and...
ONC Spring Expedition 2015 – March 28 to April 2 at the Strait of Georgia Observatory
One of the major goals of this spring expedition was to lay one kilometre of new fibre optic cable at the Delta Dynamics Lab (DDL) as the original copper-based wire had reached maximum capacity for data transfer. Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) has been working with DDL data since 2008 and also providing ship time for one expedition per year on the coastal observatory to assist with ONC’s science projects.
Today marked the end of Leg 1 - servicing installations in the Salish Sea - wrapped up after a successful 10 days of operations. At 09:00 the newly arrived leg 2 crew stood in the sun on dock with the happy, but tired, leg 1 crew. We began loading our gear and instruments right away with the ship's crane and finished at 14:00. It took us until evening to rearrange it like a giant block puzzle and tie it all down. All those hours playing TETRIS finally paid off.
The CanPac ROV Team spent the day conducting maintenance on the Remotely Operated Vehicle and working through the various tooling required for leg 2.
River deltas are known for their dynamic nature. Most of the rivers naturally carry silt that eventually enters the ocean and settles at the bottom, continuously changing the shape of the seabed. Seasonal events, such as freshets - when glaciers’ snowmelt enters the river stream - are the time when the seafloor at deltas can change rapidly causing events called “slope failures” or “subsea landslides”. Fraser River delta is one such location where subsea landslides occur regularly, in particular during the spring freshet season (May-June). Natural Resources Canada leads several research programs studying seafloor processes and conducts regular surveys of the delta area.
The orange reel holds over 5 km of extension cable on the deck of the “Georgia Transporter” powered barge after a successful recovery. This cable supplies power and a communication link from the East Node in the Strait of Georgia (175m) to an instrument platform near...
Late in the afternoon of 4 June 2012 PDT (early on June 5 UTC), VENUS lost contact with the Delta Dynamics Laboratory (DDL) platform, an NRCan lead research initiative studying delta slope stability. The image shows the last minutes of data from the platform. 2 Nortek Vector ADVs connected to...
Deployed at our Fraser Delta site in the Strait of Georgia are various sonar systems. In addition to the upward looking echo-sounder (200 kHz ZAP), we have a downward looking scanning sonar built by Imagenex. Shown here is a series of single scan images, and when compiled into an animation, the time-lapsed set of hourly images shows the changes detected by the sonar. This scanning sonar sweeps out a radial scan of...
