Commissioning of a system that terminates on the seafloor

Ocean observatories introduce demanding requirements and a variety of new complexities in the commissioning phase of a program. For the National Science Foundation's Ocean Observatories Initiative's Regional Scale Nodes (RSN) observatory program, the backbone telecommunication cables were first installed in 2011. The in-water nodes and shore terminal equipment were successfully installed in 2012, followed by the installation of the in-water secondary infrastructure, later in 2013. When the commissioning phase occurred, the primary infrastructure was already installed but connections to the secondary infrastructure had yet to be made. The RSN system test plan mitigates risk with a stepwise verification process maximizing end-to-end post installation testing possibilities. This paper reviews the test processes required to assure successful optical performance, power distribution, and network integrity after system installation.