There’s live video coming in daily from the Northeast Pacific Ocean!

The University of Washington’s Ocean Observatories Initiative team of scientists and engineers is at sea again this summer, and they are once again streaming live video via a website as they build the first U.S. regional cabled ocean observatory. Using the underwater robotic vehicle ROPOS deployed from the UW Research Vessel Thomas G. Thompson, the VISIONS ’13 team is installing and testing nearly 24,000 meters of extension cables. The regional cabled observatory is one of several components within the Ocean Observatories Initiative, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and is scheduled to be fully operational by early 2015.

Join the the VISIONS ’13 expedition via the live link here. The website also includes background, blogs, archived video, and still imagery. Viewers may submit questions via Twitter.  Read an article about VISIONS ’13 here. Visit the OOI Project Office website here for an overview of all the exciting developments that are part of the NSF Ocean Observatories Initiative. (http://www.oceanobservatories.org/)

And for more background and an overview of a past OOI regional cabled observatory expedition in summer 2011, check out “Down to the Volcano”, a 28-minute program produced in collaboration with UWTV.