The advent of Earth-observation satellites transformed how we view our planet—from occasional snapshots to near continuous, comprehensive, and real-time coverage. Likewise, the advent of cabled sensor networks on the sea floor is beginning to provide scientists and the public with a continuous flow of data, including video streams, that will revolutionize our understanding of the oceans.

The University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, has set up two such cabled networks as part of the Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) Observatory: the NEPTUNE regional ocean network, in the Northeast Pacific, an 840 kilometer-long telecommunications cable that spans ocean environments ranging from the rocky coast to the deep abyss, and VENUS, a coastal network in the Salish Sea, which includes a fjord sea inlet, and in the Strait of Georgia, which is bustling with economic activity. Both deliver information from seafloor instruments to the university via fiber optic cables. In the United States, the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), funded by the National Science Foundation, began deploying its first global infrastructure site in the Gulf of Alaska in July and will begin partial deployment of arrays off the Oregon coast in October.

While the scientific payoff of these networks is enormous, so are the technical challenges of operating in an environment that is inherently hostile to electricity and can only be reached with very expensive and highly specialized vessels and equipment.

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