Transforming the ocean sciences through cabled observatories

The NEPTUNE Canada Project plans to complete the world's first, regional cabled ocean observatory across the northern Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, off Canada's west coast, in late 2009. The $100 M observatory will comprise five main observatory sites (in 100 m coastal to 2700m abyssal plain depths) along an 800 km backbone cable that delivers 10 kVDC power and 10 Gbps communications bandwidth to hundreds of sensors over at least 25 years. Bringing abundant power and high bandwidth to diverse ocean environments, establishing a vast data archive, and enabling multidisciplinary interactive experiments with novel instrumentation in real time will transform the ocean sciences and complement other ocean observing systems. The observatory will investigate a great diversity of Earth/ocean processes, phenomena and events, and is expandable.