A
Acoustic Current Doppler Profiler (ADCP) The ADCP is an active sonar system for measuring ocean currents, much like the weather Doppler systems used to map atmospheric winds and rain. It consists of multiple acoustic transducers projecting upwards into the water column. It can measure the currents at many depths, thus providing a profile of the ocean currents.
Anode VENUS uses a telecom fibre optic cable. These cables have only one power conductor and are designed to use the sea water as the other conductor. The seawater conductor path in VENUS consists of a cathode at each node and an anode at each Shore Station. The anode connects the seawater conductor path to the power system in the Shore Station.
Aquadopp The Aquadopp Acoustic Current Meter is a single-point current meter which produces 3 velocity measurements (North, East and Vertical) in m/s.
Aquadopp Z-cell An Aquadopp with a zero cell (head height) velocity measurement.
Array One completed cabled system from seafloor instruments to shore station. VENUS consists of two arrays.
B
Backscatter When sound encounters an obstacle, or travels through the stratified ocean, several things can happen. Upon reaching a suspended solid (plankton, fish, debris), some of the sound is scattered, either in the forward or oblique directions (diffraction) or back towards the source (backscatter).
Benthic A term referring to the region on the bottom of a body of water.
C
Cable Termination Box (CTB) In the Cable Termination Box (CTB), the fibres in the cable are connected to the Shore Station network equipment and the power conductor in the cable is connected to the power feed equipment. The CTB provides access to the fibres and power conductors in the cable.
CANARIE Canada’s Advanced Research and Innovation Network.
Cathode VENUS uses a telecom fibre optic cable. These cables have only one power conductor and are designed to use the sea water as the other conductor. The seawater conductor path in VENUS consists of a cathode at each node and an anode at each Shore Station. The cathode connects the seawater conductor path to the power system in the Node.
Cisco VPN Client Direct interaction with scientific instrument packages (e.g. controlling the digital camera) is accomplished using Virtual
Private Network (VPN) access to authorized users. In all cases, access and use of the VENUS data is governed by the Data Policy.
CODAR Coastal Radar. High Frequency Radar measures surface current. Ultimately, the VENUS CODAR system will employ two CODAR stations, one at IONA and one at the Westshore Terminals. When two stations are installed, VENUS will obtain and serve our users radial current vector data for the entire region between the two stations located 20 km apart.
Conductivity, Temperature, Depth Instrument (CTD) A standard oceanographic instrument system which measures seawater conductivity (used to calculate salinity), temperature and pressure (depth).
CTD CTD stands for Conductivity, Temperature, and Depth. In order to measure the salinity of seawater, it is necessary to measure the temperature, the electrical conductivity, and the in situ pressure (depth). These three sensors also allow us to calculate the actual seawater density at the instrument. The ocean is highly stratified, with dense water nearer the bottom, and lighter, less dense water near the surface. Fresher (less salty) water is lighter (less dense) than more salty seawater, while warmer water is lighter than cold water. The Fraser River discharges huge amounts of warm fresh water along the surface, while cold salty water flows in along the bottom through Juan de Fuca and Haro Straits.
CTW The ALEC CTW measures Conductivity (mS/cm) and Temperature (ºC).
D
Data Management and Archiving System (DMAS) DMAS collects, indexes and archives all data produced by the various in-sea instruments, and provides system users access to these data. DMAS will also provide command and control of instruments to privileged users.
Daisy chain (electrical engineering) In electrical and electronic engineering a daisy chain is a wiring scheme in which multiple devices are wired together in sequence or in a ring
dbar Metric sub-unit of pressure. One dbar (decibar) is 0.1 bar, 10 kilopascals, or 1.45 pounds per square inch (psi). Pressure in the ocean is usually expressed in units of decibars, abbreviated dbar. The sea pressure at the surface is 0 dbar. The pressure in dbar and the depth in meters are approximately equal, so the pressure in the ocean at 1 m depth is approximately 1 dbar, and that at 1000 m approximately 1000 dbar etc.
Decadal Pertaining to ten; consisting of tens.
Delta Dynamics Laboratory An array of instrument packages for studying slope stability and sediment dynamics. The Delta Dynamics Laboratory is located in Eastern Strait of Georgia , at 10-40 meters depth.
Depth The depth quoted for a location is the amount of water above a point during the mean lowest low tide (note: it is defined this way for the safety of mariners, who need to know how much water is under their keel).
Diffraction When sound encounters an obstacle, or travels through the stratified ocean, several things can happen. Upon reaching a suspended solid (plankton, fish, debris), some of the sound is scattered, either in the forward or oblique directions (diffraction) or back towards the source (backscatter).
E
Event “Event” refers to some condition of scientific interest either unexpected in the data stream or determined by condtions that exceed predetermined ranges.
Extension Cable The extension cable provides 400 Vdc (Power) and 100BaseT Ethernet from the Node to the SIIM. The standard VENUS extension cable is a 70 m oil-filled hose containing CAT5 cable and power conductors.
G
Gas Tension Device (GTD) The GTD measures the total dissolved air pressure. The total dissolved air pressure is the sum of the partial pressures of all dissolved gases in the water.
GTD See Gas Tension Device.
H
Hydrophone Array The hydrophone array is a directional three hydrophone system designed and built by the Acoustics Group at the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney , BC . The overall sampling rate of the system is 200 kHz.
I
Isobath A line on a map or chart that connects all points having the same depth below the surface of a body of water; also, having constant depth.
Institute of Ocean Sciences (IOS) Located west of Sidney on Vancouver Island on a 70-acre site, the Institute of Ocean Sciences (IOS) is one of Canada’s largest marine institutes. An important link in Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s nationwide chain of nine major scientific facilities, the institute is the centre for research on coastal waters of BC, the Northeastern Pacific Ocean, the western Canadian Arctic and navigable fresh waters east to the Alberta border.
M
Monterey Accelerated Research System (MARS) MARS is a cable-based observatory system similar to VENUS, which incorporates a benthic node and a variety of instrumentation. The MARS cable was installed in Monterey Bay, California in 2007 and scheduled to be operational in late 2008.
Metadata Data which describes other data. Meta-data can be a recursive concept where the meta-data is further described by other meta-data.
N
NaN (not a number) Missing data or values that are indeterminate are assigned the place holder “NaN”, standing for “Not a Number”, according to IEEE-754. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NaN
Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems (NANOOS) NANOOS is the Regional Association of the national Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) in the Pacific Northwest, primarily Washington and Oregon. NANOOS has strong ties with the observing programs in Alaska and British Columbia through our common purpose and the occasional overlap of data and products.
NEPTUNE The North-East Pacific Time-Series Underwater Networked Experiments is a proposed US Project to cable and instrument the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate and the overlying water column. Such a regional cabled observatory would become part of the Ocean Observatories Initiative in the United States. It would also link into the NEPTUNE Canada project which is already underway.
NEPTUNE Canada The University of Victoria is building the NEPTUNE project off the coast of Vancouver Island. In 2007, NEPTUNE Canada deployed the 800k main cable that loops from Barkley Sound to Endeavour Ridge and back. NEPTUNE Canada was scheduled to be operational in late 2008.
Network Operations Centre (NOC) The NOC is the physical site where control of the overall VENUS system is located. The entire network consists of shore stations, marine cables, nodes, SIIMs, and oceanographic instruments. All of these components are monitored and controlled at the Network Operations Centre at the University of Victoria, within the VENUS office. The NOC monitors system health (i.e. electrical power, electrical current, data transmission, temperature of electronics, etc.) from all sub-systems. It permits network operators to turn on and off specific node and SIIM ports, as well as the main power supply at the shore station.
Node An underwater structure that houses power and communications equipment and provides the physical connections between the fibre optic cable and the Scientific Instrument Packages (The Node consists of a Node Base and a Node Pod).
Node Base The Node base is a steel structure on the seabed to which the fibre optic cable is secured, and into which the Node Pod rests.
Node Pod The Node Pod is the assembly that houses the Node Can containing system electronics, and the wet-mate science connector bank.
NRC-HIA National Research Council Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics. The National Research Council of Canada Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics (NRC-HIA) manages Canada’s involvement in major astronomical observatories in Hawaii and Chile, thereby ensuring Canadian astronomers full access to world-class facilities spanning the entire sky.
O
ONC Ocean Networks Canada manages and operates a world-leading ocean observatory for the advancement of science and for the benefit of Canada. It does so on the behalf of the University of Victoria, the lead institution for a national consortium of universities and partner organizations. The Observatory consists of two networks, the VENUS coastal network and the NEPTUNE Canada regional network – and a federal centre of excellence for commercialization and research, the ONC Centre for Enterprise and Engagement.
ONCCEE ONC Centre for Enterprise & Engagement. ONCCEE is a Centre of Excellence in Commercialization and Research (CECR) funded by the Canadian Government in 2009 under the Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) program. ONCCEE has a mandate to generate socio-economic benefits from Canada’s significant investments in the Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) Observatory and its two networks, VENUS and NEPTUNE Canada, through a series of programs focused on ocean science, technology and education.
OTTB Ocean Technology Test Bed. This project is part of an ongoing initiative at the University of Victoria to advance marine technology. The ocean technology test bed (OTTB) will be an engineering laboratory, located on the sea floor. It will enable scientific instrument prototyping, ocean technology development and systems engineering. More specifically, it will facilitate research into the technologies required to extend the reach of cabled ocean observatories using underwater vehicles, autonomous instrumentation, and acoustic networks.
P
Principal Investigator A user that has been granted special access privileges to the VENUS network.
psu Units used to describe the concentration of dissolved salts in water. The UNESCO Practical Salinity Scale of 1978, PSS78, defines salinity in terms of a conductivity ratio, so is dimensionless. Therefore practical salinity is correctly written without units, although often you will see the numeric value followed by psu which stands for “practical salinity unit”.
Public User A user that has no special privileges when using the VENUS network.
R
RDI Refers to Teledyne RD Instruments, previously RD Instruments, in San Diego, California specializes in the design and manufacture of underwater acoustic Doppler products for a wide array of current profiling and precision navigation applications.
ROPOS ROPOS stands for the Remotely Operated Platform for Ocean Sciences. It is an advanced remotely operated vehicle (ROV), maintained and operating by the Canadian Science Submersible Facility in Sidney, BC. Since most VENUS nodes and instruments are well beyond the depth reachable by divers, ROPOS is an essential tool for maintaining VENUS systems.
ROV Remotely Operated Vehicle. Used to deploy, retrieve, and set up the VENUS Observatory.
S
Science Oversight Committee Membership constituted from the user community; mandate to advise VENUS Operations on Facility configuration in response to user needs and to resolve conflicts among user requests.
Scientific Instrument Package One or more scientific instruments which are connected to a science connector on the Node.
Shore Station The site at or near the cable landings of the individual VENUS arrays. This site is responsible for providing power to the array and acts as a command and data interface.
Scientific Instrument Interface Module (SIIM) The SIIM is the standard VENUS hardware for instrument multiplexing. The SIIM has 4 serial and 2 Ethernet ports. All ports provide 24 Vdc for instrument power, and in addition, one Ethernet port has 400 Vdc to allow SIIMs to be daisy-chained.
U
Universal Time (Coordinated Universal Time – UTC) A high precision atomic clock time standard that replaces the historic Greenwich Mean Time. It is 7 hours ahead of VENUS local time during Pacific Daylight Saving Time (PDT), and 8 hours ahead during periods of Pacific Standard Time (PST), so you must subtract 7 hours from UTC and 8 hours from UTC, respectively, to get local time for VENUS during those periods. See the corresponding Wikipedia article for more detail.
UVic University of Victoria located in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
V
Vector The Vector is a field instrument designed for measurements of rapid small scale changes in 3D velocity, used for turbulence, boundary layer measurements, surf zone measurements, and measurements in very low flow areas.
Vector ADV Vector Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter. Also known as a “Vector”.
VENUS Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea. VENUS is a division of Ocean Networks Canada.
VENUS Instrument Platform (VIP) A bottom mounted platform designed to accommodate a SIIM and a number of instruments. This simple structure has been designed to house a VENUS SIIM, for connecting multiple instruments to a node, with sufficient space to mount a variety of oceanographic sensors. It is also designed to land neatly on the ocean bottom, allow ROPOS easy access to the wet-mateable connector, and can easily be recovered by a snap hook attached by ROPOS to the central lifting ring.
Z
Zooplankton Acoustic Profiler (ZAP) The ZAP ecosounder monitors the presence and location of zooplankton within the water column by measuring acoustic backscatter returns with ultrasonic frequencies (200 kHz). Other sonar targets realizable from the sonar backscatter data include fish and sediments.
