Regional Scale Nodes

The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Regional Scale Nodes (RSN) component is an electro-optically cabled underwater observatory that directly connects to the global Internet. It is the largest cable-linked seabed observatory in the world, and also the first of its kind in the United States. Located on the southern part of the Juan de Fuca plate, off the coast of Washington and Oregon, it is the first ocean observatory to span a tectonic plate. RSN utilizes several high-power, high-bandwidth sub-sea terminals called primary nodes which are linked together by fiber-optic cable and provide support to oceanographic sensors at key locations. Upon completion of the network in 2014, RSN will cover a distance of over 900 kilometers at depths of up to 3000 meters. Implementation of the OOI Regional Scale Nodes is led by the University of Washington's (UW) School of Oceanography, the UW Applied Physics Laboratory, and L-3 MariPro. Live RSN data from >100 seafloor and water column instruments will be made available live on the Internet. This will allow both scientists and the general public to study long-term changes in ocean systems over the next 25 years. Construction of RSN will be completed in 2014. Efforts are substantially aided by the crews of ROPOS (Remotely Operated Platform for Observation Sciences. The 83-day VISIONS ’14 expedition aboard the 274-foot global-class R/V Thomas G. Thompson is responsible for the observatory's final implementation. The Regional Scale Nodes (RSN) is a component of the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The NSF's OOI is managed and coordinated by the OOI Project Office at the Consortium for Ocean Leadership (COL) in Washington, D.C. The UW, located in Seattle, Washington, is the RSN Implementing Organization for the COL. The vision behind RSN is to launch a new era of scientific discovery and understanding of the oceans. The RSN consists of two infrastructures: primary and secondary.