TECTONIC PLATE MONITORING AND PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT IN SCIENCE

The NEPTUNE Project will encircle and cross the Juan de Fuca plate in the Northeast Pacific Ocean to explore and monitor the ocean-Earth environment at the scale of an entire tectonic plate. Three thousands km of fiber-optic and power cable will support instrumented experimental sites forming a network that will enable regional-scale, long-term, real-time observations and experiments with the ocean, seafloor, and subseafloor. Real-time connection with the Internet will offer novel opportunities for all learners to participate in the excitement of scientific discovery.

Beneath the northeast Pacific lies the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate where all the major Earth and ocean processes are represented. Deep-sea volcanoes support heat-loving microbes and bacteria, blue whale migrate through the waters, salmon abounds in the region, and life forms thrive at hydrothermal vents. The shifting of mid-ocean ridge, subduction and transform faults provide a myriad of earthquakes, sediments from the coastal mountains invade the sea during storms and carve deep canyons, and bottom currents that traveled from Antarctica finally reach the regional seafloor. This location would be ideal as the site for NEPTUNE, a project that is part of a worldwide effort to develop regional, coastal and global ocean observatories. With a fiber-optic cable network on the seafloor of the Juan de Fuca plate hardwired to high-bandwidth telecommunications networks in the US and Canada, this project will extend the Internet to the seafloor and the ocean. Real-time data from the ocean will flow into laboratories, classrooms and science exhibits and commands will flow from land to instruments deployed on the seafloor or in the water column. Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) will stay at depth and offer command-and-control capabilities to shore-based users. These innovations will give users (researchers, teachers, students, and the general public) the ability to enter, and interact with the ocean-Earth environment for basic research, learning, exploring and teaching at all levels from research universities to aquariums and museums anywhere in the world.