The fundamental difference between conventional biological ship-based surveys and stationary observing systems is the potential for wide-area spatial and long-term temporal sampling from a suite of sensors in real time. This unprecedented sampling provides both opportunities and logistic challenges to the fisheries and marine mammal science communities. Strategic choice and placement of sensors should enable a suite of organisms to be continuously monitored over a broad range of spatial and temporal scales.

Opportunities to Monitor Changes

Fisheries (i.e., fishes and invertebrates) research opportunities include examining spatial and temporal fluxes of biomass; resource assessment with extended temporal sampling; quantifying distribution variability in space and time; and species-specific habitat use. Marine mammal research opportunities include quantifying spatiotemporal distributions of animals; investigating biological responses to oceanographic variability; and monitoring behavioural responses to anthropogenic noise sources. Elements common to both groups include opportunities to monitor changes in densities, distributions, and fluxes of aquatic organisms over annual cycles and in response to episodic variability and longer trends in the ecosystem. Observing systems also offer the opportunity to concurrently examine ecosystem processes ranging from physical oceanography (wind stress, currents, mixing), through primary and secondary production, to feeding ecology of top predators.

Voluminous Data Streams

The major challenge to both groups is processing voluminous data streams and the subsequent conversion of data to usable products. Despite the collection of many ‘empty’ data cells, observatories facilitate spatially and temporally scale-dependent observations of aquatic organisms that have not been possible using mobile platforms. Since most pelagic biomass is located over continental shelves and slopes, highest priority sites are associated with spur lines from the OOI cabled system. Inshore buoy platforms will provide additional shelf locations associated with specific physical features. Offshore buoy locations provide an opportunity to monitor vertical and horizontal movements of mesopelagic fish and invertebrate species that comprise deep scattering layers and are a major food source for deep-diving marine mammals.

Note: Parts of this page were extracted from the Horne et al. ORION RFA concept proposal, “Fluxes of pelagic nekton: Using temporally indexed movements of fish and marine mammals to understand ecosystem processes,” and “Science Planning for the NEPTUNE Regional Cabled Observatory in the Northeast Pacific Ocean: Report of the NEPTUNE Pacific Northwest Workshop,” Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, 2003.