Update (March 31, 2025). The new observatory’s Iridium shore system and controller are powered and transmitting, but ONC is investigating issues with the CTD and interruptions in data flow from the instrument. Investigations are being conducted remotely, as the station is now closed for the winter.
Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) and its European partner have successfully deployed a new replacement subsea cabled observatory in Antarctica, significantly improving its capacity to deliver high quality data on near real-time environmental changes to the Southern Ocean.
The ongoing partnership between ONC, a University of Victoria initiative, and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) continues to advance our scientific understanding of one of the least observed parts of the planet, the Southern Ocean, or the Antarctic Ocean.
Oceanographic data from the partner observatory located offshore at Juan Carlos I Spanish Antarctic Station is freely available on ONC’s data management portal, Oceans 3.0.
Improving our reliability
The CSIC team deployed the first ONC partnership observatory in early January 2024, marking a major milestone in polar scientific collaboration. Throughout last year, ONC engineers, in conjunction with feedback from the Spanish team, developed a new made-in-Canada solution for remote ocean monitoring in the polar region that further enhances our data collection efforts.
"The continuation of the CSIC's partnership with Ocean Networks Canada with the installation of a new observatory, that improves the reliability of the one installed in the previous campaign, will further boost the scientific interest and capacity of the research community that carries out its studies in the area of the BAE Juan Carlos I,” says Jordi Sorribas Cervantes, director of the Unit of Marine Technology at CSIC.
“Researchers have seen in this infrastructure the ideal framework to contextualize a large part of their work with continuous environmental measurements. It is awakening a lot of interest in expanding its capabilities with more sensors and devices associated with it." - Jordi Sorribas Cervantes, director of the Unit of Marine Technology of the CSIC.
The Juan Carlos I Antarctic Station is located on Livingston Island in the South Shetlands Archipelago, north of the Antarctic Peninsula. The 38th Spanish Research Campaign has been there since December 2024 completing various objectives, including prepping the observatory for its deployment. Installation of the observatory was carried out by CSIC this week.
ONC partner observatory
As the Spanish Antarctic Station is unstaffed for many months of the year, the updated observatory was purpose-built by ONC engineers in-house to ensure the scientific instrumentation and its supporting infrastructure can better withstand the harsh climate conditions.
A new CTD scientific instrument measuring conductivity (salinity), temperature and depth (pressure), is now fully encased in a protective titanium cage and suspended at a depth of 23 metres. Additional sensors track dissolved oxygen concentrations as well as optical properties including turbidity and chlorophyll-a that are all important for monitoring seawater quality at this location where freshwater glacier melt and ocean water converge.
ONC President and CEO Kate Moran says the observatory will help provide answers to why, and how fast, the sea ice that surrounds Antarctica is changing, with resulting impacts to marine life.
“Satellites are recording drastic reductions in sea ice, but to date most research in situ has focussed on the melting Antarctic ice sheets,” said Moran. “Having detailed long-term and near real-time observations of what is happening within the coastal waters is critical to understanding how the changing conditions will impact ocean biology and the future of sea ice around the continent.”
A commitment to innovation
ONC created a palm-sized controller that’s contained within the observatory's Iridium shore system, allowing for improved high-resolution data collection and seamless integration into our broader sensor network.
Furthermore, the new controller and its operating software are supporting a higher bandwidth Internet connection and increased battery efficiency when transmitting data back to ONC for processing, archiving and visualization on our servers.
Previously, the data had a multi-stage pathway hosted by a third party that required additional hands-on steps before the data was accessible. ONC’s data stewardship team then had to manually check, collect, clean, and ingest the data.
With the new system in place, data are more easily ingested into the Oceans 3.0 digital infrastructure and, following quality checks, made readily available to everyone in the world with an Internet connection.
Both new features also mean the data collected from the observatory is more granular, and of a higher quality, providing researchers with a more detailed understanding of changes in the Southern Ocean. Currently, sampling is occurring every 30 minutes and data is uploaded to Oceans 3.0 every six hours.
“It’s very difficult to find an off-the-shelf solution that can provide both the low power consumption required for a battery-powered observatory and the processing capabilities needed to package data from the CTD instrument and send it over the satellite link,” said Ruchie Custan, ONC Marine Equipment Specialist. “To address this challenge, we collaborated with our software and data teams to develop a custom controller to streamline our design and implementation processes.”
Proof of concept
Another key benefit of the ONC-built solution is its potential for future expansion. This year’s deployment will serve as a proof of concept for the new shore system, and once fully proven, additional instruments can be integrated into the observatory in the future as well as the enabling of remote commands, such as the sampling rate.
Drawing of the Antarctica observatory. Credit: ONC
The research partnership aligns with UVic’s commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and with its strengths in climate action, life below water, life on land, and sustainable cities and communities. Learn more about UVic’s climate leadership at uvic.ca/IMPACT.
The Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) is the largest public research institution in Spain and one of the most renowned institutions in the European Research Area. The CSIC’s Unit of Marine Technology Unit manages the Spanish Antarctic station Juan Carlos I and Camp Byers on Livingston Island, and also coordinates the overall logistics of the Spanish Antarctic campaign.
Media kit available for download here.
Header image: The UTM-CSIC staff preparing the new ONC-Spain observatory for installation in the Southern Ocean. All images of the Antarctic operations have been kindly provided by Javier Sánchez: AEMET, with the 38th Spanish Research Campaign.
