NEPTUNE Canada CFI Proposal SUMMARY (February, 2002)

NEPTUNE is an innovative facility that will transform marine science. A network of more than 30 subsea observatories covering a complete 200,000 sq. km. tectonic plate in the Northeast Pacific, it will draw power from shore and exchange data with scientists ashore through more than 3000 km of submarine fibre-optic cables. Each observatory will host and power many scientific instruments on the surrounding seafloor, in boreholes in the seafloor, and buoyed up into the water column. Remotely operated and autonomous vehicles will reside at depth, recharge at observatories, and respond to distant labs. Continuous near-real-time multidisciplinary measurement series will extend over 30 years. Free from the limitations of battery life, ship schedules, shipboard accommodations, bad weather and delayed access to data, scientists anywhere in the world will monitor their deep-sea experiments in real time on the Internet, and routinely command their instruments to respond to storms, plankton blooms, earthquakes, eruptions, slope slides and other events.

This revolutionary approach, with its significant scale and reliable technology, will lead to fundamental advances that are impossible using periodic ship voyages. Scientists will be able to pose an entirely new set of questions and experiments to understand complex, interacting Earth System processes.

Canadian scientists from coast to coast are eager to use NEPTUNE to move ahead in four major research areas: the structure and seismic behaviour of the ocean crust; the dynamics of hot and cold fluids and gas hydrates in the upper ocean crust and overlying sediments; ocean climate change and its effect on the ocean biota at all depths; and the barely known ecosystem dynamics and biodiversity of the deep-sea. All involve interacting processes, long term changes, and non-linear, chaotic, episodic events that are hard to study with traditional means.

NEPTUNE is a US/Canada (70/30) partnership to design, test, build and operate the network on behalf of a wide community of scientists. The proposed site is the Juan de Fuca Plate, partly in Canadian waters off Vancouver Island. Shore stations will be located in Victoria BC and Nedonna Beach OR. The total cost of the project is estimated at up to $300,000,000, from concept to operation. About $30,000,000 has already been spent or funded on design and development.

Resource extraction is moving into the deep sea. Climate change is affecting fisheries. Populations are expanding in earthquake-prone coastal regions. NEPTUNE will be the first of many such cabled ocean observatories, and will attract world-wide attention. There is much to be gained by being among the scientific and industrial pioneers. Canadian industry can develop new products and expertise and gain exposure in new markets, world-wide. New scientific understanding will help with real Canadian problems ranging from seismic hazard assessment to fish stock management in a changing climate. The multidisciplinary data archive will be an amazing, lasting resource for scientists and students. The Canadian public will share in the research discoveries of one of the last unexplored places on earth.

An early funding commitment will ensure maximum benefits for Canada.