Venus is in the Water!
The first leg of the world’s most advanced cabled seafloor observatory was successfully installed earlier this week in Saanich Inlet near Victoria. Live data is now flowing from instruments at the bottom of Saanich Inlet to the University of Victoria.
The Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea (VENUS) project, led by the University of Victoria, is a network of scientific instruments, cameras and robotic devices connected to shore by power and fibre-optic cable. Via the Internet, VENUS will provide scientists, educators and the general public with around-the-clock biological, oceanographic and geological information and images from the seafloor.
“We’re very excited to see the data flowing from the instruments and into the data archive,” says Adrian Round, VENUS project manager. “As expected, the installation was technically challenging, but thanks to the hard work and planning of our partners, everything went very well. With the array now installed, our focus is shifting to the deployment of the next set of instruments at the end of this month.”
There are five components to VENUS: an array of scientific instruments connected by underwater cables to a central node; fibre-optic cable linking the node to shore; a shore station providing power and two-way communications to the instruments; a data management, archive and distribution centre; and a network operations centre at UVic.
Working with the VENUS team on the installation were industrial partners Global Marine Systems Ltd. and OceanWorks International Inc. (based in North Vancouver), assisted by Advanced Subsea Systems in Sidney, and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, which runs the Institute of Ocean Sciences where the cable comes ashore.
Global Marine operates the cable-laying ship, Wave Venture, which spent three days in Saanich Inlet during the installation. OceanWorks designed and built various software and hardware components of the array, including the 2.5-tonne node and the specialized instrument interface modules.
To install the array, the node was lowered from the Wave Venture 100 m to the bottom of Saanich Inlet, approximately 3 km from shore. The fibre optic/power cable was then deployed from the ship, attached to floats, and pulled to shore by a “messenger rope” guided by dive teams from Advanced Subsea Systems. At shore, the cable was pulled through a specially built conduit and connected to equipment in a nearby shore station. The instrument platform, with eight instruments attached, was later lowered into the inlet, not far from the node.
Deployment of other instruments is planned for later in February, using the ROPOS remotely operated vehicle; acoustic profilers to measure physical and biological properties in the water column; hydrophones to track the movements of marine mammals; and a digital still camera system to observe marine life and other subsea phenomena.
Live data, imagery and acoustics from Saanich Inlet will be available for public viewing and listening in early April, when a new and more comprehensive VENUS website will be launched. For updates on the project’s progress visit www.venus.uvic.ca.
When fully operational, the Saanich Inlet array will support studies of ocean processes and animal behaviour in a confined inlet. It is also a test site for the design and development of new seafloor observatory components.
A second, 40-km VENUS array is scheduled for installation in the Strait of Georgia in fall 2006. It will support studies on: long-term ocean change; tides, currents and ocean mixing; fish and marine mammal movements; seismic activity; seafloor community ecology; underwater noise pollution; sediment and slope dynamics; and plankton behaviour.
The VENUS project is funded in large part by $10.3 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the B. C. Knowledge Development Fund.
The Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea (VENUS) project, led by the University of Victoria, is a network of scientific instruments, cameras and robotic devices connected to shore by power and fibre-optic cable. Via the Internet, VENUS will provide scientists, educators and the general public with around-the-clock biological, oceanographic and geological information and images from the seafloor.
“We’re very excited to see the data flowing from the instruments and into the data archive,” says Adrian Round, VENUS project manager. “As expected, the installation was technically challenging, but thanks to the hard work and planning of our partners, everything went very well. With the array now installed, our focus is shifting to the deployment of the next set of instruments at the end of this month.”
There are five components to VENUS: an array of scientific instruments connected by underwater cables to a central node; fibre-optic cable linking the node to shore; a shore station providing power and two-way communications to the instruments; a data management, archive and distribution centre; and a network operations centre at UVic.
Working with the VENUS team on the installation were industrial partners Global Marine Systems Ltd. and OceanWorks International Inc. (based in North Vancouver), assisted by Advanced Subsea Systems in Sidney, and Fisheries and Oceans Canada, which runs the Institute of Ocean Sciences where the cable comes ashore.
Global Marine operates the cable-laying ship, Wave Venture, which spent three days in Saanich Inlet during the installation. OceanWorks designed and built various software and hardware components of the array, including the 2.5-tonne node and the specialized instrument interface modules.
To install the array, the node was lowered from the Wave Venture 100 m to the bottom of Saanich Inlet, approximately 3 km from shore. The fibre optic/power cable was then deployed from the ship, attached to floats, and pulled to shore by a “messenger rope” guided by dive teams from Advanced Subsea Systems. At shore, the cable was pulled through a specially built conduit and connected to equipment in a nearby shore station. The instrument platform, with eight instruments attached, was later lowered into the inlet, not far from the node.
Deployment of other instruments is planned for later in February, using the ROPOS remotely operated vehicle; acoustic profilers to measure physical and biological properties in the water column; hydrophones to track the movements of marine mammals; and a digital still camera system to observe marine life and other subsea phenomena.
Live data, imagery and acoustics from Saanich Inlet will be available for public viewing and listening in early April, when a new and more comprehensive VENUS website will be launched. For updates on the project’s progress visit www.venus.uvic.ca.
When fully operational, the Saanich Inlet array will support studies of ocean processes and animal behaviour in a confined inlet. It is also a test site for the design and development of new seafloor observatory components.
A second, 40-km VENUS array is scheduled for installation in the Strait of Georgia in fall 2006. It will support studies on: long-term ocean change; tides, currents and ocean mixing; fish and marine mammal movements; seismic activity; seafloor community ecology; underwater noise pollution; sediment and slope dynamics; and plankton behaviour.
The VENUS project is funded in large part by $10.3 million from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the B. C. Knowledge Development Fund.
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Media contacts
Valerie Shore (UVic Communications) at (250) 721-7641 or vshore@uvic.ca