Award: FSML-1418875

This award provided funds to establish a Friday Harbor Laboratories Ocean Observatory (FHLOO) at the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories (UW FHL) on San Juan Island, WA. This set of instruments provide real time information on the local ocean (Salish Sea) conditions, and will provide information on changing conditions over the next decades. It will become a permanent part of UW FHL's mission, to collect and provide such data to resident and visiting researchers, students and the public. These instruments will monitor water column temperature, salinity, pH, pCO2, oxygen, turbidity, fluorometry (phytoplankton chlorophyll), current profiles, zooplankton and phytoplankton images. All FHLOO instruments were set up and tested at FHL during December 2017 to May 2018 in an indoor laboratory setting, then installed at the field sites in May 2018. One set of instruments is at the deep station, 25 m depth, off Cantilever Point on the FHL property. The second, shallow, set of instruments is at 2 m depth at the end of the FHL dock. Both sets of instruments send data via ethernet connections to computers and servers at FHL, and can be accessed remotely (Seattle campus, etc.). The deep site utilizes a fiber optics cable installed by UW Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in 2013, then connects to the FHL ethernet system. Both shallow and deep stations have instruments to measure conductivity, temperature and depth (Seabird CTD), pH, pCO2, oxygen, turbidity, fluorescence (SAMI), and current profiles (ADP, Acoustic Doppler Profiler, Sontek and Teledyne). Data will be collected at 30 minute intervals continuously, except when instruments are removed for servicing. For phytoplankton imaging, an Imaging Flow Cytobot (IFCB) will be installed at the same dock station as the other instruments, but in a separate enclosure (being constructed at UW School of Oceanography). This instrument has been tested at the Seattle campus over the past year, following training provided by the manufacturer. We expect this installation to occur at FHL during summer 2018. Images will be stored on a server at UW Seattle, with copies at FHL. This instrument can be accessed remotely from Seattle, both for programming and downloading data. The autonomous zooplankton cameras developed by D. Grunbaum were tested successfully off the FHL dock for multiple time periods during 2017. Several more cameras have now been constructed, and will be added to each of the stations by divers during summer 2018. These cameras will be swapped out at regular intervals, and images will be downloaded and stored on a server at UW FHL, with copies at UW Seattle campus). D. Grunbaum has developed software to analyze zooplankton images. Data generated from this system will be available to all potential users via the NANOOS online data system, and through UW FHL archived sources. It can and will be used by commercial, educational, and research efforts in the public and private sector. We are working on a database format that will allow remote access to all of our stored data, provided in a easily accessible format consistent with other online data sources from the oceanographic community (NetCDF CF). NVS Explorer - data from the FHLOO are being provided to the NANOOS Visualisation System, which has an app called NVS Explorer (E. Mayorga, APL). Specialized software had to be created to read output in real time and display it on the NVS site. This has been tested during December 2017 to May 2018, and should be online permanently as of summer 2018. We expect the data generated to be used for education at all levels including K-12, university undergraduate and graduate programs, and to educate the general public regarding the state of the oceans, and the Salish Sea in particular. Being able to see these data and compare them to past data sets could have a strong impact on perceptions of our changing environment. Last Modified: 05/30/2018 Submitted by: Kenneth P Sebens