Woods Hole gets $97M for ocean observatories

WOODS HOLE, Mass. – The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution accepted the largest single monetary award in its history to create a system of offshore, remotely controlled, ocean observatories, the Cape Code Times reported.
The gift from the National Science Foundation and the Joint Oceanographic Institution’s Ocean Observatories Initiative totals $97.7 million. An additional $10 million will come from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, the newspaper said.
The institution will build and deploy a system of buoys, linked to stations on the ocean floor. Those stations will house unmanned underwater vehicles controlled remotely by scientists, which will collect and transmit information back to scientists on shore in real time, the newspaper said.
Scientific instruments will take such measurements as salinity and temperature at various depths, and the speed of ocean currents. Several aspects of the project are still in development, including devices that can map pollution from oil and chemical spills, as well as illegal dumping and human waste, among other functions.
Nine arrays of buoys will be located off the southeastern coast of Massachusetts where the sea floor slopes off to the deep ocean. Similar systems will be deployed off the coast of Oregon and other locations. Eventually, all the systems will be connected. •

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