Welcome

NEPTUNE is a joint U.S.-Canada venture led by the University of Victoria in Canada and the University of Washington working with the National Science Foundation's ORION Project Office in the U.S.

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Seafloor exploration has always been a very expensive and time-consuming affair. In order for such exploration to occur, normally scientists need expensive research vessels, ideal weather conditions and plenty of time. As technology has improved, scientists have been trying out new methods to learn about the ocean. One result of this new approach is the landmark NEPTUNE Project, an undersea observatory that studies deep-ocean processes.

What is NEPTUNE?

The first of its kind on Earth, the NEPTUNE Project is an unmanned undersea observation network designed for the study of the ocean. The NEPTUNE Project consists of 30 unmanned observation “laboratories” or nodes. From these nodes, land-based scientists will control and monitor sampling instruments, video cameras and remotely operated vehicles as they collect data from the ocean surface to under the seafloor. Instruments will be interactive—scientists will instruct them to respond to events such as storms, plankton blooms, fish migrations, earthquakes, tsunamis, and underwater volcanic eruptions, as they happen. NEPTUNE will allow scientists to collect data in relation to marine plants and animals, ocean currents, plate tectonics, and climate change. NEPTUNE also makes it easier to study microbial life at oceanic hot vents (some scientists believe that life on Earth started at these hot vents!).
Information and images gathered by NEPTUNE Canada instruments will flow instantly via the Internet to the shore station in Port Alberni, British Columbia, and from there to Victoria, B.C. By way of the internet, NEPTUNE Canada will transmit information to students, researchers and interested citizens in laboratories, classrooms and living rooms all around the world.
NEPTUNE Canada will complete installation of Stage 1 in Canadian waters in 2008, with 800 km of cable linking six nodes hosting over 700 sensors. The US Stage 2 should be operational in 2013. The following pictures show the structure of the NEPTUNE Observation Network.

Above, the basic design of the NEPTUNE Observation network is shown. The junction nodes (shown in red) follow the plate boundaries of the Juan de Fuca and Pacific Plates and the interface between the Juan de Fuca and North American plates. All of the nodes are connected through fibre optic cables. Notice the moorings way out in the deep ocean to make sure that the installations stay firmly on the ocean floor. All images are used with permission from the NEPTUNE Project.

This picture shows a conception of what the undersea monitoring network looks like. The various sensors monitor things such as temperature, ocean current speeds and other physical and biological variables.

NEPTUNE Canada
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NEPTUNE, University of Washington

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