A dozen scientists and engineers from the 天美影视传媒 have been elected to the . According to a statement released by the organization, the new members were selected for “their outstanding record of scientific achievement and willingness to work on behalf of the academy in bringing the best available science to bear on issues within the state of Washington.”

Three of the new members from UW were chosen because they had been elected recently to one of the National Academies 鈥� the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine. The other nine were elected by current members.

In all, UW faculty make up half of the 24 new members, who will be formally inducted in September during an annual meeting at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

Elected through recent admission to a National Academy:

: professor of computer science and engineering, to the National Academy of Engineering

: professor of atmospheric sciences, to the National Academy of Sciences

: professor of pediatrics, director of the Center for Clinical and Translational Research and associate director of the Pediatric Clinical Research Center at Seattle Children鈥檚, to the National Academy of Medicine

Elected by current members of the Washington State Academy of Sciences:聽聽

: professor and chair of chemical engineering, adjunct professor of bioengineering

: professor of sociology

: associate professor of physiology and biophysics

: professor of oceanography

: professor of nursing, adjunct professor of medicine

: professor of environmental and forest sciences

: professor and chair of bioengineering

: professor of biochemistry, professor of chemistry

: professor of chemical engineering, director of the Clean Energy Institute, adjunct professor of materials science and engineering

Incorporated by legislation in 2007, the Washington State Academy of Sciences initially had just 105 members. With this new crop of members from UW and other institutions around the state, the academy’s total membership will rise to 264. The academy’s mission is “to provide expert scientific and engineering analysis to inform public policymaking in Washington, and to increase the role and visibility of science in the state.”

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For more information, contact James Urton in the UW Office of News & Information at 206-543-2580 or jurton@uw.edu.

Today, with the National Science Foundation-funded U.S. , the ocean is accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week to anyone with an internet connection. The 天美影视传媒 led building and installation of the OOI’s , an underwater ocean observatory off the Pacific Northwest coast that is connected by fiber optic, high-power communication cables to the internet.

“About four out of five instruments on the Cabled Array are still streaming data live to shore, which is phenomenal for something that’s as technologically advanced and deployed in harsh ocean environments,” said , a UW professor of oceanography who now leads the UW portion of the project. “It’s an astounding piece of infrastructure.”

This tech-heavy project creates a permanent, 24/7 scientific presence in Pacific coastal waters and the deep ocean, including on an underwater volcano 5,000 feet beneath the oceans’ surface. UW scientists and engineers built most of the hardware and installed it to transmit data live to shore for the next quarter of a century.

The Cabled Array is one of 83 platforms that make up the OOI and the only one directly connected to the internet. The full OOI includes more than 830 instruments providing more than 100,000 . The platforms and instruments are spread across seven arrays, or hubs, in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

The centralized opened for the first time in January to allow users 鈥� scientists, educators and the public 鈥� to access the data for free. Since then, the quantity of data available and tools for downloading and plotting data have steadily increased, and the OOI continues to expand its data availability.

“The OOI is placing as much ocean data online as possible and making it available in real time,” said , the NSF’s assistant director for geosciences in a . “In addition to scientific discovery, we hope to spark the public’s interest in the sea.”

Other currently available data sources for the Cabled Array include from the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, a central hub for seismology data that has a data center in Seattle, and tilt and inflation data from the displayed through a site from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A UW research website on the 2015 eruption of Axial Volcano includes a of a 500 degrees Fahrenheit hot spring that lets viewers zoom in to explore individual deep-sea lifeforms.

https://youtu.be/qAm3N8yvjCw

Together, data from the OOI will help researchers gain a better understanding of earthquakes and shifts in undersea tectonic plates; learn about the unique lifeforms that thrive around deep-water hydrothermal vents; observe the methane-based ecosystems near gas-rich seeps on the seafloor; monitor the upwelling of nutrient-rich water that fuels productive coastal fisheries; and tease out links between ocean circulation, weather, and climate.

Scientists aren’t the only ones who will benefit. , including data visualization exercises and lesson plans, will allow educators to engage students. Commercial or recreational fishermen can also monitor offshore conditions by checking data from nearby buoys.

“The complexity of myriad interacting oceanic processes and the fact that we all depend upon the ocean in many ways, demands that technologically innovative approaches be employed enabling persistent human telepresence to be projected into entire volumes of our oceanic ecosystems,” said , a UW professor of oceanography who came up with the concept of the first tectonic-plate-scale cabled ocean observatory and led its design and installation.

UW students have already used observatory data in separate projects to track whale calls, investigate sounds related to the and study plumes of methane bubbles where the coastal shelf slopes down to the deep ocean.

“I tell students: No matter what dataset you look at, you’re going to make discoveries,” Kelley said. “We’ve never had this kind of resolution before and availability to see significant events unfold as they happen 鈥� not just for a single instrument, but for multiple instruments in the same area, which means you can start looking at how things respond to environmental events.”

Several scientific publications related to the recent eruption of the Axial Volcano are in the works, and the team expects more research and educational collaborations to emerge. At the UW, the undergraduate is working to build a smaller, test observatory on the UW Oceanography dock in Seattle. Kelley and colleagues are helping local and college students on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula to build their own ocean sensors and interpret the data that come back.

“It’s all part of building the pipeline of students who will apply a new way of learning about our oceans,” Kelley said. “This data is just a first taste of how so many scientific fields can benefit.”

Kelley will lead a from July 11 to Aug. 14 to swap out instruments on the Cabled Array, polish off camera lenses, and bring some of the tethered robots in for annual maintenance.

The OOI is funded by the NSF, and construction and initial operations were overseen by the . Partners include the UW, Oregon State University, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Rutgers University and Raytheon.

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This was adapted from an NSF .

For more information, contact Kelley at 206 685-9556 or dskelley@uw.edu and Delaney at jdelaney@uw.edu or 206-543-5059. At the NSF, contact Cheryl Dybas, 703-292-7734 or cdybas@nsf.gov; at Consortium for Ocean Leadership, contact Leslie Smith at 202-787-1613 or lsmith@oceanleadership.org. See links for high-resolution and .

When an in April off the Oregon coast, researchers knew within minutes that something spectacular was happening more than 300 miles offshore. Precision hardware installed by the 天美影视传媒 last summer let scientists see its effects almost instantly from shore.颅颅

A team of researchers, engineers and students is now at sea t颅o maintain that equipment and assess the volcano’s aftermath. The cruise 鈥� from July 4 to Aug. 7 aboard the UW’s Thomas G. Thompson research vessel 鈥� is the first trip to the site since the eruption. The , where a cable brings power and the Internet to waters off the Pacific Northwest coast, provides a real-time, virtual eye on the deep sea. It’s part of the National Science Foundation’s .

In the lead-up to this summer’s expedition, a film crew visited the UW team in early June to hear about the project:

The cruise now under way includes 18 undergraduates from the UW, Bellingham’s Western Washington University and Aberdeen’s Grays Harbor College. Majors include oceanography, fisheries, engineering and Earth sciences. The students are working around the clock to help a specialized swap out sensors and platforms for annual maintenance and help scientists and engineers check in on other instruments, which include a high-definition video camera and deep-sea water and DNA sampler. They also will undertake their own self-directed science and outreach projects that will continue through the fall.

The group is posting daily news updates on the , which includes and . You can also follow live updates on Twitter at .

Last summer, in an led by UW oceanography professor , the team successfully installed the last of the hardware for the more than 100 networked instruments. This year is the first annual cruise to maintain the observatory, which will continue to gather data about climate change, marine chemistry, deep-sea life and seismic activity for a quarter of a century.

“The cabled observatory allows us to put equipment from high-tech labs at the bottom of the ocean,” said , a UW professor of oceanography who is at sea for the cruise. “It really gives us eyes that we’ve never had before.”

The cruise has been going well, she said, thanks to the work of the team at sea and on shore, and the energy and enthusiasm of the students.

Khadijah Homolka, a UW Earth and space sciences student who participated in the first of the three legs, in July about getting used to the ship’s motion, mistakenly sitting in the captain’s chair, working on marine science instruments and getting ready for her 4 a.m. shift logging the operations of the deep-sea robot.

“It is a little intimidating, but it’s often the nerve-wracking experiences that turn out to be the most memorable ones,” Homolka wrote. “I’m currently in the open ocean, an incredibly hostile and fickle environment, so why not try something a little scary?”

This summer’s work includes swapping out three refrigerator-sized “” designed and built at the UW . These 200-pound pods require annual maintenance to let them zoom up and down through 600 feet of water collecting data nonstop. The team will also install three to patrol the deeper depths.

The full 35-day itinerary includes checking each of the Cabled Array study sites. These range from an active underwater volcano and scalding-hot vents to seafloor deposits leaking methane gases closer to shore, and a site where the shallower coastal ocean drops off into the open sea. The ship will come ashore in Oregon briefly July 19-20 to swap crews and load new equipment.

Meanwhile, other team members are watching from the UW campus. The ship lowers the tethered robot down nearly two miles beneath the ocean’s surface to plug in equipment. As soon as that equipment connects to the cable, it’s online and data flows at the speed of light to land. The onshore team runs installation and checks to make any adjustments before the robot’s work is complete.

So far, preliminary data is available on the seismic activity, pressure and at the volcanic site. The interface that will publicly display all the data streaming in from the observatory is and is scheduled to launch by the end of the year.

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For more information, contact Kelley at dskelley@uw.edu and Delaney at jdelaney@uw.edu. Kelley will be at sea with intermittent email access until Aug. 7.

Thanks to a set of by the 天美影视传媒 to bring the deep sea online, what appears to be an eruption of Axial Volcano on April 23 was observed in real time by scientists on shore.

“It was an astonishing experience to see the changes taking place 300 miles away with no one anywhere nearby, and the data flowed back to land at the speed of light through the fiber-optic cable connected to Pacific City 鈥� and from there, to here on campus by the Internet, in milliseconds,” said , a UW professor of oceanography who led the installation of the instruments as part of a larger effort sponsored by the .

Delaney organized a on campus in mid-April at which marine scientists discussed how this high-tech observatory would support their science. Then, just before midnight on April 23 until about noon the next day, the seismic activity went off the charts.

The gradually increasing rumblings of the mountain were documented over recent weeks by , a UW marine geophysicist who studies such systems.

During last week’s event, the earthquakes increased from hundreds per day to thousands per day, and the center of the volcanic crater (2 meters) over the course of 12 hours.

“The only way that could have happened was to have the magma move from beneath the caldera to some other location,” Delaney said, “which the earthquakes indicate is right along the edge of the caldera on the east side.”

The seismic activity was recorded by eight that measure shaking up to 200 times per second around the caldera and at the base of the 3,000-foot seamount. The height of the caldera was tracked by the , which measures the pressure of the water overhead and then removes the effect of tides and waves to calculate its position.

The depth instrument was developed by , an oceanographer at Oregon State University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who has also and predicted that the volcano would erupt in 2015.

The most recent eruptions were in 1998 and 2011.

The volcano is located about 300 miles west of Astoria, Oregon, on the Juan de Fuca Ridge, part of the globe-girdling mid-ocean ridge system 鈥� a continuous, 70,000 km (43,500 miles) long submarine volcanic mountain range stretching around the world like the strings on a baseball, and where about 70 percent of the planet’s volcanic activity occurs. The highly energetic Axial Seamount, Delaney said, is viewed by many scientists as being representative of the myriad processes operating continuously along the powerful subsea volcanic chain that is present in every ocean.

“This exciting sequence of events documented by the OOI-Cabled Array at Axial Seamount gives us an entirely new view of how our planet works,” said , division director for ocean sciences at the National Science Foundation. “Although the OOI-Cabled Array is not yet fully operational, even with these preliminary observations we can see how the power of innovative instrumentation has the potential to teach us new things about volcanism, earthquakes and other vitally important scientific phenomena.”

The full set of instruments in the deep-sea observatory is scheduled to come online this year. A first maintenance cruise leaves from the UW in early July, and will let researchers and students further explore the aftermath of the volcanic activity.

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For more information, contact Delaney at 206-543-5059 or jdelaney@uw.edu. See also a from Oregon State University. Read previous UW Today articles about the observatory .

“It went well, we accomplished all of our goals,” said principal investigator , a UW professor of oceanography. “It’s very exciting to see this thing coming together.”

Most of the work took place on or around a mile-high volcano that sits in water 2 miles deep, about 300 miles off the Oregon coast.

The instruments are the eyes and ears of a project that aims to provide a new way of doing oceanography. The UW is leading construction and early operation of a $239 million National Science Foundation project to bring high-voltage power and broadband Internet to the deep sea, allowing real-time, continuous monitoring of a geologic environment linked to massive earthquakes, major currents and mysterious ancient life forms.

The cabled observatory off the Washington and Oregon coasts, known as the , is part of the national , an effort to integrate U.S. measurements of the ocean and seafloor.

The cruise was the first of two UW-led expeditions to install the observatory hardware. Now on the seafloor are a video camera, an instrument that monitors inflation and deflation of the volcano, two pressure sensors, current meters, seismometers and three of the junction boxes that connect the high-voltage power lines to the scientific instruments. All are ready, once they are plugged in, to send live updates from the seafloor.

A highlight of the cruise was the first real-time recording of an earthquake inside the volcano. , a UW professor of oceanography, tuned into the live video feed in late July to help locate and install the seismometers. During the system’s six-hour test, while a robot provided power and Internet connection, the seismometers recorded one and 14 smaller ones. Wilcock was surprised and wonders if that’s a typical level of activity.

“This volcano erupts every 10 to 15 years, and we haven’t observed it long enough to really understand how it works,” Wilcock said. “The opportunity to observe this whole cycle is really quite important.”

Another coup was getting the high-definition video camera to work. Engineers at the UW adapted a camera to have pan, tilt, zoom and lighting functions that would work in the deep sea. After reviewing the first images the scientists decided the camera could remain nestled among the deep-sea hydrothermal vents until the network is ready for plug-in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5j44zkw-Jc

Twenty UW undergraduates participated in the cruise. Students kept and created , worked on their own projects for class credit, and assisted the research team by documenting dives and helping process water samples while at sea.

The main goal of this year’s expedition was that connect the study sites to the high-voltage backbone cables. The 11 cables laid this summer included three that run right across the caldera of the active underwater volcano.

Many times the research team had to change plans to avoid waves that could jerk the robot’s tether as it entered the water carrying loaded spools weighing up to 4,000 pounds. One day the team waited until conditions were right to launch and then worked 48 hours straight laying three sections of cable.

“The pace was just incredible,” said project scientist . “Everybody was planning two moves ahead.”

The team also prepared for next year’s work by installing caissons, which are like big sewer pipes that researchers insert into the soft sediment and vacuum out the sediment inside, to hold precision seismometers. Also still to come is a thermometer that slips into the mouth of a hydrothermal vent, a mass spectrometer that will perform chemical analyses, tethered that will zoom from the ocean floor to near the surface, and more instruments to monitor seeping methane gas off the Oregon coast.

The remaining instruments will be tested this year and installed during an 80-day cruise next summer. The observatory is scheduled to be complete and commissioned in early 2015.

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For more information, contact Nancy Penrose, UW鈥檚 OOI communications coordinator, at 206-221-5781 or penrose@ocean.washington.edu.

Read a one-page project .

The UW is leading a $239 million project funded by the National Science Foundation to install a network bringing data directly from the deep sea. Just as robotic rovers on Mars now keep a digital eye on the Red Planet, a suite of electronic tools will soon send photos, observations and high-definition video of an alien environment just off our shores.

“The ocean is the ultimate life-support system for the entire planet,” said program lead , a UW professor of oceanography who is chief scientist on all four legs of this summer’s cruise. “The Ocean Observatories Initiative, and especially the cabled portion in the Northeast Pacific, will fundamentally shift how humans interact with and study the global ocean basins.”

Members of the public can accompany the team through daily blog posts, images and video the team will share through Aug. 23 on its .

The cabled observatory, known as the project, is part of the national , an effort to integrate U.S. measurements of the ocean and seafloor and educate the public about the ocean environment.

While space vehicles can generate energy from the sun and send data wirelessly through space, neither is possible in the deep ocean. This summer the UW-led team will lay another 14 miles of cable, bringing power and fiber-optic communication at study sites on the seafloor. The new lines will extend from the main cables to sites with earthquake activity, volcanism and biological productivity that scientists want to investigate.

Two summers ago, the UW team helped telecommunications contractors to lay the backbone cable, which carries 10,000 volts needed to transmit power over long distances and transmits up to 240 gigabits of data per second. Those stiff cables were laid in relatively straight paths off the side of telecommunications industry ships.

Now the UW vessel will use a remotely operated vehicle to lay medium-powered extension cords from the backbone to the scientifically interesting 鈥� and by definition hazardous 鈥� study sites.

The initial part of the expedition is a short trip to the underwater volcano at to check on hardware installed last summer.

The ship will then leave Newport, Ore., to work on a 200-mile horseshoe-shaped cable off Oregon’s coast, where the Juan de Fuca plate dives under the continental plate to create the Pacific Northwest’s number-one earthquake threat. As well as one day monitoring seismic activity, researchers at the UW and Oregon State University will track currents bringing nutrients from the deep ocean up to the continental shelf, an important region for fisheries and site of a recurring low-oxygen .

An underwater robot with a specialized apparatus to lay cable will unroll spools that are as tall as a person and weigh as much as 6,000 pounds. The robot flies at less than 2 feet per second to carefully spool out the cables, which measure from a third of a mile to 3 miles long.

Since聽 researchers can’t see the seafloor, roughly 75 feet below the robot, they will track progress using the ship’s position and marks on the cable. After each section is laid the robot retraces the route to inspect the cable and, if necessary, lay mats underneath to protect against abrasion over rough terrain.

During this leg the team will also survey a nearby ridge seeping with methane hydrates, a potential energy source, and make preparations for more work there next summer.

In mid-July the team will again dock in Newport, Ore., reload the ship and follow a cable that spans the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate to its western edge at Axial Seamount, an underwater volcano 300 miles offshore.

The team will lay three cables that run directly across the volcano’s caldera. One carries 10 gigabits of data per second, 10 times the transmission in other cables, needed for the high-definition video camera.

At the underwater volcanic ridge scientists will study the planet’s most common source of volcanic activity and try to better understand the fundamental forces that drive plate tectonics. Once video equipment is installed, scientists and the public hope to get their first chance to see an underwater volcano erupt in real time.

The final leg will take place at two hydrothermal vent fields near Axial Seamount. At this site scientists will capture information about the black smokers and white snowblowers, as well as the dense clusters of tube worms and microscopic animals that gather around the geologically active sites, which may harbor Earth’s oldest life forms.

This is one of the trickiest sections to lay cable as the terrain is rough and the vents spew liquid at up to 700 degrees Fahrenheit. Researchers have mapped the cable paths to within a few feet precision.

“You don鈥檛 want to make these calculations on the fly, with your robot suspended in the water column above some rough terrain,” said project scientist , who will be co-chief scientist on the third leg.

The robot has a UW-designed piece to allow cable testing. So it’s possible that this summer’s work will involve lifting the flexible, oil-filled ends of the cable, removing their casings and plugging them in to allow testing from the ship more than a mile overhead.

A half-dozen students will be aboard each leg, along with engineers at the UW who worked with scientists to design and build the observatory components.

After the infrastructure is fully installed and tested, the cables will connect and instruments 鈥� ranging from seismometers to high-definition video cameras and machines for DNA analysis 鈥� will be installed next summer. The cabled observatory will be fully complete and commissioned in early 2015, and data is expected to flow from it for at least 25 years.

“It really is a historic moment for oceanography,” said , a UW professor of oceanography who will be co-chief scientist on three legs. Kelley, an expert on hydrothermal vents, said she looks forward to real-time data that will help to understand the links between seismic activity, volcanoes and deep-sea life forms.

“I don鈥檛 think oceanography will ever be the same, in the kinds of questions we can ask, and the ways we can answer them,” she said.

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

Read a one-page project .

Created during the last two years, the video plunges viewers into the experience of building a new type of ocean observatory 鈥� one that will use fiber-optic cables to bring electrical power, high-speed Internet and modern instruments to the deep sea. The video takes viewers to one of the sites of the observatory now under construction: Axial Seamount, a volcano some 300 miles off the West Coast and a mile beneath the ocean’s surface.

The documentary includes dramatic footage captured by high-definition video cameras operated by submersible robots. The non-human stars of the documentary include a deep-ocean octopus, bioluminescent jellyfish, and rarely seen microbial “snow blowers” that stream from the underwater volcano.

The goal of the National Science Foundation-funded observatory, part of the national Ocean Observatories Initiative, is “to have a permanent presence in the ocean via a new technology,” said principal investigator , a UW professor of oceanography.

But realizing that goal is not an easy task.

“There is no book on how you lay a fiber-optic network over an active submarine volcano,” Delaney said in the video.

There are tense moments as the team uses underwater robots to survey the site of the observatory. One scene shows a cable placed across a volcanic hydrothermal site while the robotic arm measures the temperature inside and confirms it is much hotter than the cable can survive. (The contractor has since replaced that section of cable and moved it to another location.)

“The ocean really is the last unexplored frontier on the planet,” said , a UW professor of oceanography. “When we dive in places, even when we’ve been there before, chances are we’re going to make a discovery.”

The observatory will replace those yearly dives with a constant virtual window on the marine life and volcanic eruptions deep below the ocean’s surface.

The documentary also features , a project scientist and UW alumnus; work from , who does visualizations for the project; and former educational director . Communications coordinator co-produced the documentary.

One of the purposes of the 2011 cruise was to find sites for the observatory’s giant electrical outlets. Those outlets were installed last summer by a telecommunications contractor. This year Delaney, Kelley and their team of researchers and students will sail from Seattle to install the low-voltage electrical outlets, lay smaller cables and attach sensors that will, in a few months, begin to send real-time observations back to land-based computers.

Live video and updates will be posted throughout July and August at the project’s . The observatory is scheduled to be commissioned and fully operational by early 2015.

• 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.

Delaney, a professor of , is director of the , a cabled underwater research facility being constructed off Oregon and Washington that’s one component of the .

“John’s powerful outreach and innovative activities developed public support for the vision of the powerful and technologically advanced ocean observing system now under construction,” the AGU citation says. “His passionate message about the oceans enthralls audiences, and he is a highly sought after speaker giving more than 50 invited talks a year. . .He is as excited to share his excitement with school children as with TED audiences and national committees.”

Among his outreach activities, Delaney worked with colleagues to develop the first formal programs bringing middle and high school teachers to sea, now common opportunities, according to the citation. He worked with NOVA in 1998 to film the successful recovery of black smokers from ocean ridges. In 2005 Delaney鈥檚 group was the first to stream high-definition video live from sea floor. More than a million viewers across the globe watched on the web.

The letters nominating him for the award talk of the historical and cultural aspects he employs to explain science, including his use of poetry. One letter writer called him “. . .an extraordinary scientist and communicator, in essence, an environmental philosopher.”

Delaney joined the UW in 1977 and currently holds the holds the Jerome M. Paros Endowed Chair in Sensor Networks. Leader of more than 50 ocean expeditions, his research focuses on the deep-sea volcanic activity of the Juan de Fuca Ridge in the northeast Pacific Ocean.

Follow expedition in August

Starting the second week of August, check for images and updates from the Visions11 ocean expedition involving undergraduates, graduate students and researchers on board the UWs research vessel Thomas G. Thompson. Between Aug. 11 to Sept. 1 expedition goers will explore, map and sample as part of the regional scale nodes project.

Submarine cables for the nations first made landfall last week on the Oregon coast.

The cables eventually will provide power, transmit instructions and carry data back to scientists and the public from instruments installed across miles of seafloor and in the ocean.

Natural phenomena that occur throughout the worlds oceans will be studied, according to UW oceanography professor John , director and principal investigator of the regional scale nodes project, one part of the U.S. .

“The regional cable network will enable scientists to conduct local investigations of such global processes as climate-influencing ocean currents, active earthquake zones, creation of new seafloor and rich environments of marine plants and animals,鈥� he said.

Delaney, Pete , the projects chief operating officer, and Michael , associate director for operations, were among the UW staff on hand when the first cable landed.

“The horn on the backhoe blasted and someone shouted, 鈥楾he cable has landed!鈥� UWs Nancy Penrose, communications coordinator for the project. “With that the southern segment of the cable emerged at the shore end of the conduit pipe at 11:15 a.m. on Tuesday, July 12, in Pacific City.

“And ocean science history was made.鈥�

Two cables were landed last week and a cable-laying ship will work the rest of the summer to finish extending them underwater from shore to research areas off the coast.

The cable that landed July 12 will eventually extend 75 miles (120 kilometers) out to , a place with cold undersea vents that are lush with life, and associated with deposits of gas hydrates, mainly methane. Among other things, scientists are trying to determine if theres energy that might be extracted, or if the methane might pose an environmental threat as a potential contributor to climate change. A loop on the cable will support instruments for a led in part by Oregon State University.

The second cable, that landed July 15, will extend 310 miles (500 kilometers) to , the most robust volcanic system on the Juan de Fuca Ridge. Its there that scientists hope, among other things, to better understand how submarine volcanoes support life in the absence of sunlight.

, the firm hired to install the cables, should complete the work by the end of August, Barletto said. Although the crew with TE SubCom routinely lands cable, Penrose wrote in her blog that, “for those of us involved with the project it was a thrilling and emotional moment to achieve this milestone.鈥�

Next spring, plans are to begin deploying the connecting to the cable segments, Barletto said. Instruments, sensors and moorings will eventually plug into the nodes. The UW has contracted with Inc. of Goleta, Calif., to design and build the regional scale nodes projects primary infrastructure.

July 13, the day after the first cable landing, an audience of some 200 people packed an open house at the Kiawanda Community Center in Pacific City to hear about the Ocean Observatories Initiative. Visitors viewed displays and underwater footage and heard a presentation by Delaney. A local citizens group, the Nestucca Valley Community Alliance, is looking to the regional scale nodes project as one way to increase interest and opportunities in science education for local students.

The Ocean Observatories Initiative, funded by the , will create a networked system to make ocean and seafloor measurements on , regional 鈥� the part led by the UW 鈥� and scales. A fourth concerns public engagement.

The initiative is managed through the , based in Washington, D.C., a group that includes the nations top oceanographic institutions.

“With the of the Ocean Observatories Initiative undersea cable we see connection of a tangible piece of the OOIs unique infrastructure that will bring to shore data from multiple sensors and instruments
and change the way we conduct ocean observations for decades to come,鈥� said Tim , vice president and director of ocean observing for the consortium.

“This is a significant step forward and moves us closer to our goal of providing the sustained observations needed to help us better understand and manage our oceans.鈥�

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For more information, start with:
Penrose, 206-221-5781, penrose@ocean.washington.edu