Sea-floor laboratory offshore British Columbia, Washintgton, and Oregon

Yes! More sea-floor laboratories! I posted just last week about a somewhat similar plan for Monterey submarine canyon. This one is in the northeastern Pacific Ocean, offshore of BC, Washington, and Oregon.

Here are the highlights from this article in ScienceDaily:

• NEPTUNE (North-East Pacific Time-Series Undersea Networked Experiments) is a joint U.S.-Canada venture led by the University of Victoria in Canada and the University of Washington in the United States.

• Located in the northeast Pacific on the active Juan de Fuca tectonic plate.

• NEPTUNE will allow scientists to monitor biological, oceanographic and geological processes over a period that could stretch to more than two decades.

• Six unmanned sea floor nodes, each roughly the size of a sport utility vehicle and each hosting an array of instruments, equipment and video cameras will be installed on the ocean floor in Canadian waters.

• The first stage of NEPTUNE is scheduled to start in summer 2008.

Let’s hope their equipment doesn’t get destroyed by a turbidity current…..on the other hand….we could use the data :)