• U.S.
• UW-led
• UW Applied Physics Laboratory work

The basement lab near the 天美影视传媒 campus is, literally, buzzing. High-voltage machines produce energy that will soon run through cables snaking along the seafloor. A dozen engineers hunch over electronics, making alterations or running checks. In one corner, a nitride-coated titanium shaft has been sitting in a bucket of saltwater for four months to test the coating for corrosion. A glass-walled cleanroom prevents contaminants from interfering with seals on housings designed to keep out seawater pressing in at 4,200 pounds per square inch.

This is crunch time for 天美影视传媒 preparations to build the world’s largest underwater observatory. The National Science Foundation in 2009 launched the $239 million effort,聽pending availability of funds and Congressional approval. , UW professor of oceanography, leads the project to create a that will bring power and Internet to the ocean floor. This new concept will use remote-controlled instruments and high-bandwidth video to create an enduring, real-time presence in the deep ocean.

Researchers in the UW’s were tasked by Delaney to build and test the equipment that will make up the observatory. Much of that equipment will be installed this summer. This is the biggest project the 70-year-old marine engineering institute has ever undertaken, said project lead , a principal engineer with the lab.

“This concept of a real-time observatory will change what we do as ocean engineers, what we will learn how to do, and what ocean scientists can do with these systems now and in the future,” Harkins said.

The cabled observatory, known as the project, is part of the national , an effort to integrate U.S. measurements of the ocean and seafloor. will build coastal and global observing networks, manage the data and conduct educational outreach. The Pacific Northwest observatory will span the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate off the Washington and Oregon coasts, the likely source of the next large regional earthquake.

Most of the regional network’s components will be built from aircraft-grade titanium because the material is strong and resists corrosion, which is crucial for electronics that will spend decades in saltwater.

“We are having a notable impact on the non-aircraft market for titanium,” remarked Applied Physics Laboratory engineer .

Even so, most components must be designed to be switched out for possible repairs or upgrades during the observatory’s projected 25-year lifespan.

Over the past two summers, the backbone cable and high-voltage junction boxes were laid by telecommunications contractors. This summer’s deployments venture into uncharted territories. The team has booked 60 days of ship time on the UW’s Thomas G. Thompson research vessel for three cruises in July and August. Researchers will install lower-voltage cables that run from high-voltage nodes closer to the areas of scientific interest: deep-ocean volcanoes, seismically active plates, and an underwater ridge that seeps energy-rich methane gas.

While the engineering team readies the components, the science team is mapping out the science plan and finalizing the cruise details.

“The timeline isn’t forgiving on this one,” Cram noted.

In design work over the past four years, the engineers have considered how to protect the infrastructure from a possible failure by any of the components 鈥� some of which are experimental, and none of which has operated for this long at these pressures. They also have created a common time stamp for all the data, since scientists might want to make precise comparisons of measurements taken by different instruments at opposite ends of the network. They will do their best to protect all the instruments from ships, waves, marine animals and corrosion.

As the team finalizes the design, engineers have to ensure the sensors don’t interfere with each other. They also have to dissipate heat from the electronics, which give off about as much heat as a 60-watt light bulb but, in a tightly sealed housing, could still fry instruments.

“This is a highly integrated system operating in a very challenging environment,” said Applied Physics Laboratory engineer , who oversees the sensor group. “From an engineering perspective, that makes this a challenging project.”

The team this summer will install about 40 sensors, of 13 different types, now being assembled and tested at the UW. The instruments include:

• A high-definition video and still camera that will provide live footage, starting this summer, to researchers and the public.
• Seismometers to provide early warning of earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.
• Commercial oceanographic sensors, including three precision pressure sensors built by Sea-Bird Electronics of Bellevue, Wash.
• Water samplers built by UW oceanographer . Some samples will be stored until researchers collect them; others will be analyzed in place to detect the seawater’s chemical and genetic contents.
• A , developed by Harvard University oceanographer Peter Girguis, that will be installed near the volcano’s caldera
• Chemical sensors, developed by UW oceanographer , that will go inside the hydrothermal vents. These will be inserted slowly so fragile ceramic parts survive the transition from near-freezing water to 570 潞F (300 潞C) temperatures inside the vent.
• Seafloor pressure and tilt sensors, developed by at Oregon State University, that detect pressure buildup below the ocean floor.

UW engineers have designed the system to digitize all this data and send it back to land via the cables in a few thousandths of a second.

Miles of underwater cable will arrive during coming weeks to a UW storage facility on Lake Washington. The engineering team will expand there as it builds components and outgrows its campus lab space.

The next few months will be hectic, said Harkins. Some of the UW researchers will join the telecommunications contractor to run a month-long final check of the backbone cable system from the Newport, Ore. shore station. UW engineers will build and test 10 secondary nodes to drive the instruments that will be installed this summer. Members of the engineering team will work with contractors and scientists to run pressure tests and perform final checks on their instruments.

Yet another team is developing a profiling system that records data in the upper 650 feet (200 m) of the ocean. That system is perhaps the most technically challenging aspect of the whole observatory, researchers said, and won’t be installed until summer of 2014, but initial testing will begin this summer at the UW’s .

Forty-six UW faculty and staff members are putting in long hours on the cabled observatory, including 15 on the science team and 31 on the engineering side.

Whoever you talk to, there’s one common refrain: “This is going to be a very busy summer.”

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For more information, contact Nancy Penrose, UW’s OOI Communications Coordinator, at 206-221-5781 or penrose@ocean.washington.edu.

Along the way it will collect important data about ocean properties including currents, microorganisms and temperature, sending the information in real time to scientists sitting comfortably in their offices–and with updates it will do this for 25 years.

As with the entire cabled observatory network, there is much about the equipment that is unprecedented. Other instruments used to collect data about oceans survive only a few years. Some only send data periodically or when scientists can retrieve them from the ocean.

“This is a really special thing,鈥� said , an engineer at the Applied Physics Lab who helped design the profiling system.

It is comprised of a floating platform about 650 feet below the surface and tethered to the ocean floor, nearly two miles under water. Attached to the platform is the profiler equipment which will float to the surface and get pulled back down by a winch.

Via the Internet, scientists will be able to remotely program the profiler to travel on different schedules. For instance, researchers may want the profiler to “stop and loiter,鈥� collecting data from as many as 15 sensors over a period of time at a certain depth, Cram said.

Even the cable that connects it to the winch is special. Inside it are wires that carry power from the main seafloor cable to the shallow profiler and that connect it to the Internet, Cram said. When one of the instruments on the shallow profiler picks up data, it transmits it over the Internet in real time so that scientists–or anyone with an Internet connection–can access it from land.

Much of the equipment will last for decades underwater because it is fabricated from titanium, the ultrastrong, lightweight metal that is also highly resistant to corrosion. But not every component will last that long. Some, like sensors, will wear out over time and be replaced.

Having the cabled observatory permanently in place and constantly collecting data is incredibly important for science, said , a UW alum and oceanographer with the University of South Florida who is helping develop the Ocean Observatories Initiative project.

“This is ground breaking,鈥� she said

Many events in the ocean, like storms, are episodic and scientists either cant get to the area to deploy instruments or they aren’t able to predict the specific event.

Other ocean processes change slowly over long periods of time and scientists need continuous measurements to study them.

“We know the ocean is changing, but we need high-frequency, continuous measurements over long periods of time to really understand it,鈥� Daly said.

The instruments on the shallow profiler will measure things like temperature, salinity, currents, oxygen, carbon dioxide and pH (ocean acidity).

Oceanographers from UW and other institutions collaborated closely with the engineers to design the profiler. During the planning phase, oceanographers determined the science requirements for the system. Now during the construction phase, the engineers are working closely with scientists to implement the envisioned system.

Cram and his team are now resolving final questions identified during the recent review and are just starting to build the system. They hope to begin testing their profiler in about six months. Deployment on the cabled network is scheduled for 2014.

The investment by the NSF in the Ocean Observatories Initiative, including construction and 25 years of operations, could reach $769.5 million. The UW is expected to receive nearly $235 million for design and construction of the underwater network and for initial instrumentation and operations.

Led by Professor John R. Delaney in the UW School of Oceanography, the observatory now being constructed comprises 560 miles of underwater fiber-optic cable as well as scientific instrumentation like the shallow water profiler. The observatory’s cabled network connects to shore in Pacific City, Oregon.

Other Ocean Observatories Initiative sites around the world will also collect ocean data at critical locations. The overall goal of the initiative is to build an infrastructure that will transform the studies of issues including climate variability, ocean circulation, air-sea exchange and geodynamics over entire tectonic plates.

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For more information, contact Nancy Penrose; UW OOI Communications Coordinator; 206-221-5781