E/V Nautilus will begin her second season in the Pacific Ocean exploring Canadian waters with Ocean Networks Canada (ONC). ONC operates world leading cabled ocean observatories that supply continuous power and Internet connectivity to a broad suite of subsea instruments. The ONC observatory installations span one of the widest ranges of ocean environments found anywhere in the world.

The observatories allow scientists to operate instruments remotely and receive data at their home laboratories anywhere on the globe in real time. By co-locating instruments of different types, researchers can study interactions among geological, chemical, physical, and biological processes that drive the dynamic earth-ocean system. These long-term observations have wide-ranging policy applications in the areas of climate change, earthquakes and tsunamis, port security and shipping, sovereignty and security, and ocean sound management.

Nautilus will visit four sites along the NEPTUNE observatory off Vancouver Island’s west coast including: Barkley Canyon, Clayoquot Slope, Cascadia Basin and Endeavour. The primary objectives of the cruise will be to conduct dual-ship operations with cable ship Wave Venture to deploy and recover subsea fiber-optic cables used to power and transmit data across the NEPTUNE observatory. Along with these coordinated ship operations, Nautilus will also conduct seafloor mapping surveys, ROV surveys and sampling, and will deploy new instruments associated with the observatory in these diverse ocean environments.