VENUS
Venus (Victoria Experimental Network under the Sea project) is the world’s most advance underwater observatory. The Venus project is a cabled sea floor observatory, operated by the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. It has offered new ways of studying the ocean since its inception in 2006.It allows scientists to run monitor their various ocean experiments from the comfort of thier dry offices.
VENUS uses the latest internet, telecommunication technology and a network of 3000 kilometers of fiber optic cables at a maximum depth of 300 meters to create a permanent link to the cameras and other monitoring instruments on the seafloor. The VENUS project has more than 30 sensors at a depth of 90 meters these measure the temperature, salinity and pressure of the water 24 hours a day.These highly advanced instuments can do everything from watching for under water landslides to recording the various sites and sounds under water. These instruments provide the oceanographers, marine biologists and geologists at the nearby University of Victoria with real-time data. Something that up until now, was not possible."The Venus project represnts a step change for the world of marine science and oceanography, which will help improve the way marine scientists observe ocean life in the future, said Dr. Phil Hart, Director of Engineering at Global Marine. "Current data methods provide a snapshot view only, whereas the VENUS observatory can be like a continuous film, which will allow more reliable long term observation." The aim of the VENUS project is to study three sites near Victoria, British Columbia;The first array of sub-sea instruments is located at Saanich Inlet it became operational in February 2006. The sites at the Fraser River Delta, and the third site located deeper waters of the Strait of Georgia} both became operational in 2007.Each location is linked to the internet with underwater power and fiber optic cable.Instruments are attached to a node which is interfaced into the main cable.Both the Saanich location and the Strait of Georgia location host a hydrophone array.The hydrophone arrays provide researchers with unparrelled quality sound recordings The data, including images and audio, is processed and made available to researchers and the public through the VENUS website. The goal of the project is to not only provide valuable information to advance research, but also to allow everyone from grade school students to curios parents to log on and view the ocean up close. The cost of the project is an estimated $10.3 billon. The project is funded by the federal and provincial governments of Canada, as well as private industry.VENUS is designed to provide continuous observations for 20 years.
See also
NEPTUNE, another United States-Canada cooperating oceanography project on Juan de Fuca plate
MARS, a similar MBARI cabled-based oceanography observatory
SATURN, Science and Technology University Research Network, a coastal margin, or river-to-ocean, testbed observatory for the United States Pacific Northwest, a project of the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center for Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction.
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