The VENUS Cabled Observatory: Engineering Meets Science on the Seafloor

The VENUS cabled ocean observatory is one of the first in the next generation of ocean observing platforms. It is an integration of marine telecommunication and sub-sea technologies with oceanographic instrument systems, accessible over the Internet. Commands originate at the network operations centre and are piped over a virtual private network (VPN) through a shore station and down a marine fibre optic cable to the sub-sea components consisting of central nodes, instrument interface modules, and instrument systems. Data from the instrument sensors flows through the infrastructure and is briefly buffered at the shore station before being transmitted over the Internet to the data management and archive system (DMAS) at the University of Victoria. Here the information is sorted and stored for publication on the project web site and retrieval by observatory users. The observatory consists of 2 independent arrays located in the coastal waters of southern British Columbia. The first is in Saanich Inlet with a node at the 96 m depth near the entrance to Patricia Bay. The second array is in the Strait of Georgia, with two nodes southwest of the main mouth of the Fraser River, including a deep node at 300 m and a shallow node at 170 m. Among the challenges has been the engineering design and installation of a complex sub-sea facility that is both flexible and robust, while meeting the needs of the scientific research community. The main components of the VENUS observatory, the initial suite of instrument systems, and the preliminary data retrieval methods are presented. For the latest data and system status, visit the VENUS website at: http://www.venus.uvic.ca/.