ROV serviceable science node for cabled ocean observatories

Twenty-five (25) year life cabled ocean observatories are being planned with deep-sea and/or shallow water science nodes connected to the shore by commercially off the shelf (COTS) submarine telecommunication equipment, providing ample electrical power and high bandwidth data communications interfaces for science experiments and monitoring projects. The COTS equipment housed within the science nodes are not yet designed or qualified to traditional submarine telecom standards and are known to be less reliable than the associated backbone cable components. Maintenance at the bottom of the ocean is a costly and complex task Therefore, cost effective maintenance solutions have had to be found that do not require the use of a cable lay vessels (C/V) once initial installation and commissioning has been completed. To address this need for cost effective servicing of the science node, a ROV serviceable science node has been developed that allows the power and communications equipment housed within the node to be easily recovered and replaced by the same research vessel (R/V) and ROV deploying and servicing the science instruments.