Building the World's First Regional Cabled Ocean Observatory (NEPTUNE): Realities, Challenges and Opportunities

NEPTUNE (North-East Pacific Undersea Networked Experiments) will be the world's first regional cabled ocean observatory, covering most of the 200,000 km
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Juan de Fuca tectonic plate. After several years of planning, NEPTUNE Canada should complete the installation of the northern part with five observatory nodes in late 2008; the US Congress may approve 6-year installation funding for NSF's Ocean Observatories Initiative this year, resulting in the NEPTUNE US portion becoming operational in about 2013 with probably four observatory nodes. The abundant power, high bandwidth communications, and hundreds of sensors delivering data and imagery in real or near real time will revolutionize our knowledge of the ocean environment and interacting processes. With the world's oceans in a state of crisis, the development of cabled observatory technology is most timely and will offer a data archive of unparalleled importance for new discoveries. NEPTUNE Canada has secured over $85M, mainly from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the BC Knowledge development Fund, and $17M in-kind support. Several government departments, NSERC, and CANARIE have provided other grants and contributions. The University of Victoria (UVic) leads a consortium of 12 Canadian universities, and is required both to own and operate the observatory. UVic also leads the coastal observatory, VENUS (www.uvic.ca/venus). It has established Ocean Networks Canada as a wholly owned, not-for-profit agency to manage the NEPTUNE Canada and VENUS cabled observatory projects as national facilities. Alcatel-Lucent was contracted to design, manufacture and install the NEPTUNE Canada subsea infrastructure, with a 25-year lifespan.