Continuing and New Measurements at the Abyssal ALOHA Cabled Observatory

The ALOHA Cabled Observatory (ACO) is a general purpose “node” providing power, communications and timing connectivity for science use at Station ALOHA 100 km north of Oahu. Included are a suite of basic sensors making core measurements, some local and some sensing the water column. At 4728 m deep, it is the deepest scientific outpost on the planet with power and Internet. Importantly, Station ALOHA is the field site of the NSF-funded Hawaii Ocean Time-series (HOT) program that has investigated temporal dynamics in biology, physics, and chemistry since 1988, at a site that is representative of roughly 70% of the world ocean, sampling the ocean from top to bottom to monitor and study changes on scales of months to decades. The co-located Woods Hole mooring (WHOTS) provides meteorological and upper ocean physical data. The CMORE (Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education) and SCOPE (Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology) programs address their respective science topics at ALOHA. Together these programs provide a truly unique means for observing the ocean across all disciplines and regimes (deep sea, near surface, etc.).

ACO has been operating in the abyss since June 2011, collecting temperature, salinity, velocity, acoustic, and video data (see for instance the abstract by Lukas et al., Spatial Analysis of Abyssal Temperature Variations Observed from the ALOHA Cabled Observatory and WHOTS Moorings). Using the University of Hawaii remotely operated vehicle ROV Lu`ukai, a basic sensor package was recently installed equipped with a Paroscientific nano-resolution pressure sensor, a WetLabs fluorometer/turbidity sensor, and a Seabird CTDO2 instrument. These data will be presented and described.