NEWS RELEASE

UNIVERSITY OF VICTORIA NEWS RELEASE
August 19, 2022 Ocean Networks Canada (ONC), an initiative of the University of Victoria, today welcomes a new federal investment in its world-leading ocean observatories located on the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic coasts of Canada. The support will help drive climate change solutions, safer coastal communities, Indigenous ocean data stewardship, a healthier ocean and a sustainable blue economy. The [funding announced](https://www.uvic.ca/news/topics/2022+onc-funding+media-release) today is awarded to UVic through the Canada Foundation for Innovation’s (CFI) [Major Science Initiatives Fund](https://www.innovation.ca/news/msi-august-2022), which supports a portion of the operating and maintenance costs of selected national science facilities across Canada. ONC will receive an investment of almost $115 million over six years to continue advancing ocean observing, extending the reach and application of its open access big data to benefit science, society and industry. In the past 16 years ONC has expanded beyond its early work observing the Salish Sea to becoming a true national ocean observing facility, with installations and local and Indigenous partnerships on all three coasts of Canada, attracting more than 23,000 users of its scientific data around the world. The real-time and long-time series ocean data that ONC collects from its cabled, mobile and community-based observing networks make possible a wide range of services that support scientific discovery, climate impact monitoring, maritime safety, tsunami and earthquake early warning, innovation in climate change mitigation, and a sustainable ocean economy, says Kate Moran, president and chief executive officer of ONC. “Canadians can be proud of their national observatory that not only yields valuable insights into this undersea world that covers two thirds of our planet, but also contributes to Canada’s climate leadership through innovation in ocean nature-based and technological climate mitigation solutions and coastal resilience. This investment also means that ONC, through its work with the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, can continue working with partners In Canada and internationally to advance projects in pursuit of healthier oceans, science that promotes ocean resilience, and a citizenry engaged with the oceans’ role in supporting life on this planet,” says Moran.

NEWS RELEASE Injecting carbon dioxide (CO₂) into ocean basalt has almost no risk of triggering any seismic activity such as earthquakes or fault slip according to new research from [Solid Carbon](https://solidcarbon.ca/), a promising climate change mitigation project for reducing the amount of carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere. Advanced computer modelling by scientists with the Solid Carbon team shows injecting CO₂ under the Cascadia Basin has less than 1 percent chance of causing fault slip. Solid Carbon, an international research team led by Ocean Networks Canada (ONC), a University of Victoria (UVic) initiative, and funded by the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, is investigating how to permanently and safely store CO₂ below the ocean floor. The goal is to capture CO₂ from the atmosphere and inject it into young (less than 15 million years old) porous basalt rock, such as that found in the Cascadia Basin off the west coast of Canada, where it would interact with minerals, transforming into carbonate rock.

NEWS RELEASE Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) has recorded the highest daily average summertime temperatures at two of its seafloor observatory sites in the northeast Pacific Ocean since continuous live monitoring started there in 2009. ONC, a University of Victoria initiative, operates the North-East Pacific Time-series Undersea Networked Experiments (NEPTUNE) observatory that powers scientific instruments and thousands of sensors, providing real time ocean conditions data. The 800-kilometre NEPTUNE cabled observatory is located off the west coast of Vancouver Island.

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.

NEWS RELEASE Massive volcanic carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions contributing to an extreme global ocean deoxygenation event over 120 million years ago has modern day implications for understanding a climate warming “tipping point,” according to new research published in *Nature* this week, led by a scientist at Ocean Networks Canada, a University of Victoria initiative. The paper titled [*A climate threshold for ocean deoxygenation during the Early Cretaceous*](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07876-1) reconstructs historical Earth-system processes to establish a climate warming threshold that when crossed, leads to widespread and persistent ocean deoxygenation. Led by Kohen Bauer, director of science at ONC, the research team reconstructed environmental conditions using rock samples from the University of Milan archive. The sedimentary rocks studied date back between 115 and 130 million years and were originally deposited in the ancient oceans. By measuring the geochemical composition of the rocks, the team produced a unique high-resolution record of environmental change. “Our work shows that massive volcanic carbon emissions led to a rapid increase in atmospheric CO₂ concentrations and the crossing of a climate-warming threshold, or tipping point, that resulted in widespread ocean deoxygenation. Following this, Earth’s climate system then remained in a warmed state for over two million years,” says Bauer, who began the work while at Hong Kong University’s Department of Earth Sciences and completed it at UVic.

A new study published in the [*Marine Ecology Progress Series*](https://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v748/p33-52/) highlights a resilient sea sponge’s responses to its changing environment - captured by Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) seafloor cameras over four years, marking the longest continuous recording of these ancient animals in the wild. The baseball-sized sponge, nicknamed Belinda by the researchers, was recorded by an eight-camera array and scientific instruments deployed at Folger Pinnacle, a site within ONC’s NEPTUNE (North-East Pacific Time-series Undersea Networked Experiments) subsea observatory off the British Columbia coast. Researchers at the University of Alberta, University of Victoria (UVic), and ONC, a UVic initiative, observed Belinda’s daily, yearly, and seasonal changes in size, shape and colour. The cameras were rolling for the sponge’s sometimes daily “sneeze-like” contractions; as it shrank prior to the winter hibernation; as well as during the marine heatwave ([aka the Blob](https://www.oceannetworks.ca/news-and-stories/stories/the-blob-blog-warm-northeast-pacific-ocean-conditions-continue-2016/)) in the Pacific Ocean off North America between 2013 to 2016. Long-term monitoring of sedentary animals like sponges is rare and the study provides pivotal insight into the impact of environmental conditions such as water quality and temperature, both of which are affected by climate, according to the research team.