NEWS RELEASE
*Header image: In a global sea of Argo floats, ONC’s five deep floats are the first to explore the NE Pacific Ocean below two-kilometre depths, to a maximum depth of 4 km, while equipped with a dissolved oxygen sensor.*
Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) has expanded the reach of Pacific Ocean monitoring with the deployment of new deep-sea Argo floats that collect vital ocean data while traveling up and down through the water column, the space between the sea surface and the seafloor.
The introduction of these drifting autonomous “droids of the deep” brings a new dimension to ONC’s existing deep ocean observing system in the Pacific, NEPTUNE, (North East Pacific Time-series Undersea Networked Experiments), an 800-plus-kilometre cabled observatory located on the seafloor off the west coast of Canada.
Five floats have been deployed in the northeast Pacific this year, between latitudes of 49.57° and 53.18° N, during expeditions led by Fisheries and Oceans Canada. They are now successfully transmitting ocean data that are open and accessible, expanding Canadian contributions to the international Argo program.