For 5 weeks, we were out at sea on-board the R/V Thomas G. Thompson with the University of Washington (UW) for the VISIONS '15 expedition which ran from the 4th of July to August 7th, 2015. For our fourth year with the project, our role shifted from the installation to the maintenance of the the secondary infrastructure of the OOI Regional Scale Nodes cabled ocean observatory with the UW Ocean Observatory Initiative (OOI) team of oceanographers and engineers. On all fronts, this expedition was a resounding success and marked the first operational and maintenance expedition of the RSN's project, now called the Cabled Array. As always, CSSF and its staff enjoyed the many challenges brought forward by this ambitious project.

Read more: Expedition Update - Visions' 15

In June 2014, CSSF was part of a collaborative research cruise between Dalhousie University, NOAA, and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO), to explore deep sea corals in the Gulf of Maine onboard the RV Bigelow. This cruise explored several offshore canyons and discovered significant concentrations of breath-taking centuries-old cold water corals. Over the course of 12 days, ROPOS conducted 16 dives, visited 7 dive sites, and accumulated 168 hours of dive time providing the research team with 68 video transects, 236 physical samples, 7.5 terabyte of HD video, and over 1000 digital stills.

Read more: ROPOS helps protect sensitive benthic areas

For just over 12 weeks, we were out at sea on-board the R/V Thomas G. Thompson with the University of Washington (UW) for the VISIONS '14 expedition which ran from the 13th of July to October 6th, 2014. For the third year, our role was to install the secondary infrastructure of the OOI Regional Scale Nodes cabled ocean observatory with the UW Ocean Observatory Initiative (OOI) team of oceanographers and engineers. On all fronts, this expedition was a resounding success which marked the transition between RSN's construction to its operation and maintenance. As always, CSSF and its staff enjoyed the many challenges brought forward by this ambitious project.

Read more: Expedition Update - Visions' 14