Monday June 2, 2008: On Tuesday May 27, the Saanich Inlet Node reported alarms from the VENUS Instrument Platform (VIP) port. In order to diagnose these alarms, the Saanich Inlet Node was powered down until Friday May 30. IOS conducted electrical work on Friday May 30 which resulted in a number of power outages. Therefore, all data streams from Saanich Inlet have interruptions between Tuesday May 27 19:41:13 UTC and Saturday May 31 05:23:13 UTC.
Thursday, May 29, 2008: Due to electrical work at the IONA Waste Water Treatment Plant, the VENUS SOG Array will be shutdown on Thursday 29 May 2008. All data streams from the VIP and Delta Dynamics Study Areas in Strait of Georgia have interruptions between Thursday May 29 16:27:13 UTC and Friday May 30 01:07:13 UTC.
Thursday, May 15, 2008: Check out our new transmission plots from Strait of Georgia!
Thursday, May 8, 2008: At 0837 this morning we experienced an alarm on SIIM2 in Saanich Inlet. The SIIM UDP stream was lost and then reacquired. A review of the Node and SIIM telemetry suggests that at 0837 we had an event that caused the voltage on the main cable to reduce. After testing all the elements of the shore station power feed, everything was found to be working correctly. The node power levels had returned back to their nominal values by 0930. All the Camera Platform instruments (SciFish 2100 BB Echo Sounder, Aquadopp Current Meter 1176, Alec CTW 0003) have a data gap on 08-May-2008 between 15:12:02 and 15:51:02 UTC.
The DMAS server went down at 12:04 PDT today. The server was restarted and everything came back online. Unfortunately, all of the SeaBirds and piggy back instruments on all study areas: Saanich Inlet VIP, Strait of Georgia VIP, strait of Georgia Delta Dynamics Laboratory, lost data (i.e. the data were not buffered). There is a data gap on 08-May-2008 between 19:04:13 and 22:03:13 UTC for all SeaBirds (SeaBird CTD 16+ 4997, SeaBird CTD 16plus 4998, SeaBird CTD 16 plus 4686) and piggy back instruments (Aanderaa Oxygen Optode 0579, SeaTech Transmissometer 0475, SeaBird 43 Oxygen 1400, Aanderaa Oxygen Optode 580, Wetlabs FLNTU 0603009).
Wednesday, April 9, 2008: Data are unavailable due to DMAS equipment failure. We are currently diagnosing the problem.
Thursday, March 27, 2008: There is a planned power outage at IOS scheduled for 8:30 PDT on Saturday March 29, 2008. Saanich Inlet data streams will be interrupted during this time.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008: Check out our data plots from Strait of Georgia! We are displaying data from 2 SeaBird CTD’s, an Aanderra Oxygen Optode, a Wetlabs FLNTU and a Zooplankton Acoustic Profiler (ZAP). More data from Strait of Georgia are coming soon!
Wednesday, March 19, 2008: There was a power outage at the Strait of Georgia shore station today between 2008-Mar-19 17:45:13 and 2008-Mar-19 18:11:13 UTC. Data streams were interrupted during this time.
Monday, March 10, 2008: There is a planned power outage at IOS scheduled for 8:30 PDT on Saturday March 15, 2008. Saanich Inlet data streams will be interrupted during this time.
Friday, March 7, 2008: The Strait of Georgia ZAP (ASLZAP1008) was stopped around 20:00:00 UTC on March 7 due to file interpretation issues. There will be data gaps between March 7 2008 and March 10 2008. The DMAS Messaging Queue failed on March 7 causing data interruptions between 08-Mar-2008 06:25:13 and 08-Mar-2008 19:50:28 UTC for all devices in Strait of Georgia.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008: The VENUS Team successfully deployed the Strait of Georgia Shallow Node pod on 25 Feb 08. The Node pod powered-up on the first attempt and the associated instrument platforms were then connected. The first data from Strait of Georgia were captured in the archive at 0912 29 February 2008.
The first operational deployment of the CFFS Remotely Operated Cable Laying System (ROCLS) also took place on 29 Feb 08. A six kilometre fibre optic extension cable was deployed from the Strait of Georgia Shallow Node to the Sediment Dynamics Laboratory on the Fraser Delta slope. This was a challenging evolution with strong currents and poor visibility, but the skill of the ROPOS team prevailed.
CSSF ROCLS with 6km extension cable.
ROPOS with Node pod attached being deployed in Strait of Georgia
Friday, February 22, 2008: Computing Services at UVic has scheduled a power outage at the Enterprise Data Centre between February 22, 10pm to February 23, 6pm (PST). We are expecting data interruptions during this time and the VENUS website will be down for portions of this time period.
Saturday, February 23, 2008: There will be a planned power outage at IOS on February 23 between 08:30 and 18:00. Data streams will be interrupted during this time.
Friday, February 22, 2008 – Saturday, March 1, 2008: The VENUS Team will be at sea between February 22 – March 1 maintaining the Saanich Inlet array, and continuing installation of the Strait of Georgia array. There will be data interruptions during this time. Power delivery to the shallow node pod in Strait of Georgia has proven difficult but our partner, OceanWorks Intl, may have the solution. Wish us luck!
Wednesday, February 20, 2008: NRCan to carry out research on the VENUS Strait of Georgia array. WD, NRcan and Environment Canada’s technological and operational investment of $353,700 will help build and deploy an 8-km extension of the VENUS observatory in the Strait of Georgia. "For the first time, we will be able to monitor in real time the behaviour of the muds and sands that the Fraser annually deposits on the foreslope of the delta”. Three Seismic Liquefaction In-Situ Penetrometers (SLIPs) will be installed at the mouth of the Fraser River in the Strait of Georgia off Vancouver.
Verena and Minister Rona Ambrose; Extending VENUS with Delta Dynaics Lab will will help advance the NRCan research and support industry of BC.
Gwyn Lintern (NRCan) provides some details on the Delta Dynamics Lab project to the WD Minister Rona Ambrose.
Click here for full media release, or view poster (PDF).
February 15, 2008: Check out our new AquaDopp Current Meter Plots!
February 10, 2008: There was a power failure on the Saanich array. All of the instruments came alive when power was restored resulting in minimal data loss except for the SeaBird CTD. The SeaBird driver had problems reconnecting and as a result there are data gaps between 10-Feb-2008 09:42:23 and 10-Feb-2008 11:08:23 UTC.
February 8, 2008: HAPPY BIRTHDAY VENUS! For the last two years, VENUS has collected data from 22 different instruments and 42 sensors in Saanich Inlet. Visit our data pages to browse our data galleries and download data. For more of what’s new see our Newsroom and System Status pages.
December 20, 2007: All instrument drivers were restarted on December 19, 2007 creating a data gap between 19-Dec-2007 23:21:23 and 23:37:57 UTC.
December 3, 2007: A power outage at IOS interrupted VENUS data streams. The instrument drivers for the Falmouth CTD 1622 on the VIP, the ALEC CTW 0004, Aanderaa Optode 0418, and ISUS-X Nitrate Sensor 0116 on the Camera Frame recovered normally resulting in a data gap between 03-Dec-2007 20:38:17 and 21:15:50 UTC. Problems with the SeaBird CTD driver resulted in a data gap between 03-Dec-2007 20:38:23 and 23:40:23 UTC. All instrument drivers were rebooted generating another data gap in all data streams between 23:35:52 and 23:40:43 UTC.
November 19, 2007: Images from Oceans 07 MTS/IEEE Exhibition, Vancouver Conventions and Exhibition Centre, September 29 – October 4, 2007
Adrian Round gives presentation to a group of conference participants on VENUS website showing how easy it is to access, retreive and manage data at www.venus.uvic.ca.
VENUS Engineer – Paul Macoun explains the engineering details of the VENUS Instrument Platform.
VENUS Director – Verena Tunnicliffe reveals technical details of the Node on the node model (1:24 scale) created by Adrian Round.
November 19, 2007: PICES XVI Annual Conference, Victoria Convention Centre, October 29 – November 2, 2007
VENUS Associate Project Director, Science – Dr. Richard Dewey shows data plots representing continious data streams from the Saanich Inlet array that was deployed in February 2006.
November 16, 2007: Check our the new, improved live data applet on our home page, now showing more properties. Click on a property to go directly to plots for the last 24 hours.
November 12, 2007: A power outage at IOS caused a gap in VENUS data streams between 14:42:23 and 15:44:23 UTC.
November 9, 2007: A new multimedia gallery is now available showing the three stages of the Strait of Georgia cable installation.
November 5, 2007: Last May, we deployed the 35km Strait of Georgia cable and the two node bases. On Oct. 20, 2007, we attempted to deploy the first Strait of Georgia Node pod at the Shallow Node site. While the currents and poor visibility from moving sediment proved to be very challenging, the ROPOS pilots successfully mated the Node pod to the Node base and connected it to the main fibre optic cable. Despite very extensive pre-deployment testing on the bench and in test tanks, a fault occurred that is preventing the pod from powering-up. Our troubleshooting to date suggests that the Shore Station power system, main cable and sub-sea connectors are working and that the 1200-400V Medium Voltage Converter in the pod are all functioning but the Node pod does not seem to be drawing any power. We are currently planning a recovery of the Node pod to work with our partner, OceanWorks Inc to identify and rectify the fault before our next deployment opportunity in Feb 08. Bear with us! We keep reminding ourselves: "If it was easy, someone else would have done it."
October 31, 2007: TELNET links to the Node and SIIM controllers have been failing at random intervals since Monday October 22. Saanich system was rebooted and data streams were interrupted between 26-Oct-2007 20:16:23 and 26-Oct-2007 20:26:23 UTC, 28-Oct-2007 22:07:23 and 28-Oct-2007 22:16:23 UTC and 31-Oct-2007 15:40:23 and 31 Oct-2007 15:56:23 UTC.
October 30, 2007: Checkout new images and video in the multimedia galleries!
September 17, 2007: VENUS instruments in Saanich Inlet were raised, cleaned and redeployed in the week of September 12. We will soon be delivering new images from our camera – including a forensics experiment underway.
September 10, 2007: Look for VENUS at Oceans ’07, MTS-IEEE Oceans 2007, Vancouver, B.C., September 29-October 4 2007. VENUS is a highlighted project and will also be exhibiting.
September 10, 2007: Between September 11-14 2007, we’ll be servicing our Saanich Inlet instruments as part of our regular maintenance, and time series may have gaps.
September 4, 2007: Check out our new Density, SigmaT, and Entire Data Record plots!
August 3, 2007: A power outage at IOS caused a gap in VENUS data streams between 04:26:40 and 04:57:40 UTC on August 3, 2007. Power has been restored and data are flowing again.
July 23, 2007: Adrian Round contributed to "Exploring the last frontier" on BBC News | Technology. Article by Rebecca Morelle, Science reporter, BBC News. Click here to read the full text.
July 22, 2007: The Hydrophone System in Saanich Inlet has been shutdown. It will be recovered in September to diagnose the failure.
July 16, 2007: Another breaker failure occured on SIIM 3 at ~14:11 PDT resulting in data loss from the ISUS Nitrate Sensor and Aanderaa Oxygen Optode on the camera frame. SIIM 3 is offline until the problem can be resolved.
June 15, 2007: There will be a planned power outage at IOS bettwen 08:00 and 13:00 on Saturday, June 16. Data will be unavailable during this time.
June 7, 2007: There are no data available between ~3:30 and 15:40 UTC due to a disk error at the shore station data centre.
June 4, 2007: A power failure at IOS resulted in a loss of data between 10:21am PDT and 3:30pm PDT.
May 13, 2007: The batteries in the camera platform SeaBird CTD are now exhausted. The data stream from the CTD will be interrupted until we recover the platform and repair SIIM 3.
Photo By: Patrick McFadden
May 7, 2007: 40 km of fibre optic telecommuniations cable and node bases were layed in Strait of Georgia off the Wave Venture Cable Ship between May 5 – 6. Construction of the node pods and instrument suites continues for deployment in September 2007. The image below shows an aerial view of the Wave Venture in Strait of Georgia, lowering a node base into the water off the stern.
May 2, 2007: A power outage interrupted data flow and resulted in a loss of approximately one hour of data.
April 30, 2007: A second problem with the breaker card in SIIM 3 has resulted in a loss of power to the SeaBird CTD on the camera frame. The SeaBird continues to run on batteries and data is being stored in the archive.
April 20, 2007: VENUS will be laying the Strait of Georgia array backbone cable during the first week of May 2007. In addition to the cable, the cable ship Wave Venture will be deploying Node base plates with break out connectors for power and fiber optic communications. The Node pods, which house the Node electronics, will be deployed in September 2007. In addition, VENUS will deploy three instrument platforms and two hydrophone arrays during the fall.
March 30, 2007: A problem with a breaker card in SIIM 3 has taken the camera offline. The problem will not be resolved until we recover SIIM 3.
March 2, 2007: Data streams will be interrupted on Saturday March 3, 2007 due to a planned power outage at IOS. Due to equipment issues with the data centre, long term data plot updates will be sporatic until early next week.
February 8, 2007: HAPPY BIRTHDAY VENUS! One year ago on February 8, 2006, we plugged the first instruments into the node deployed the day before. Data began to flow. On February 8, 2007, we have data coming from 31 sensors on 15 instruments in Saanich Inlet. We have 132 registered users from at least 10 countries and an archive containing nearly half a terabyte of data.
February 6, 2007: Planned maintenance on the Saanich Array was completed on 5-Feb-2007. Instrument platform, hydrophone array and camera platform are all deployed and functioning. The following instruments have been added to the Saanich Inlet suite: ISUS-X Nitrate Sensor, AquaDopp ADV, Gas Tension Device, second SeaBird 16 plus CTD, and a third oxygen sensor.
January 24, 2007: The Saanich array will undergo scheduled maintenance from 31-Jan. to 6-Feb. Instrument data streams will be interrupted during this time period.
January 15, 2007: Check out out maintenance cruise galleries under Facility.
January 4, 2007: The ALEC CTW failed on December 23, 2006 because incorrect ground fault trip values were loaded by the shore station software. Data are now flowing normally and can be viewed in our Data Gallery or queried from the Search Data Page.
November 29, 2006: The Saanich Array was shut down between November 26 – 28 due to power outages at the shore station. Data are unavailable for this time period.
November 15, 2006: Data from the new Seabird 43 oxygen sensor can be viewed on the data plots page. The instrument was deployed during the maintenance cruise Nov. 6-13.
November 9, 2006: Data are unavailable from VENUS for the period of October 5 to November 8, 2006 due to a failure in the seafloor instrument interface unit. Data are now available from all sensors on the VENUS Instrument Platform in Saanich Inlet. The camera and hydrophone are out of the water until the first week of February for upgrades.
October 17, 2006: We are currently dealing with power system failures in two of the Scientific Instrument Interface Modules (SIIMs). This has interrupted the data stream from the VIP and the Camera Platform. The SIIMs are currently under repair and will be redeployed during a planned maintenance cruise 6-13 Nov 06. Data prior to the failures can still be downloaded from the data archive.
August 8, 2006: The Saanich Inlet Array was serviced successfully and data will reappear on the plots and Live Data Applet later today. Congratulations to everyone involved in our first servicing effort.
June 23, 2006: CBC TV The National on VENUS.
June 22, 2006: Our new website was officially launched today.
VENUS Instrument Platform
May 2, 2006: For the last two months, the entire VENUS team has been busy deploying instruments (March), configuring the systems, developing automatic data plots (see Data Products in the menu to the left), developing the new web page (coming in June), and developing tools to provide access to the database. In March, the team loaded ROPOS and various instrument systems aboard the CCGS John P. Tully and connected the VENUS Instrument Platform (photo to the right), the digital stills camera system, and the broadband Hydrophone Array to the Node in Saanich Inlet.
Preliminary plots of the data from some of the sensors are displayed in the Data Products section. Tools are being devoped to retirieve and process the Zooplankton Acoustic Profile (ZAP) and Acoustic Doppler Current Profile (ADCP) data. The digital stills camera and Hydrophone systems are controled by dedicated computers at the Saanich Inlet shore station. Presently, limited imagery and audio data have been logged, and multimedia galleries are being compiled for the new web page. From the first fews days of observations, here is a video clip of two flat fish interacting beside a squat lobster, and here are two audio clips of a float plane taking off and a ship going overhead. In June, the new web page will include additional galleries of data, imagery, video, and audio clips. Stay tuned.
February 23, 2006: First image from the Saanich Inlet Still Camera The VENUS Camera Platform was lowered into place earlier today and connected to the network, and the first image obtained with the CMAP Camera System, which uses an 8 Megapixel camera. Click on the image below to see a medium sized (750×563 pixel – 389kb jpg) image. Image copyright VENUS.
February 20-26, 2006: John P. Tully and ROPOS Cruise During the next week we will be busy installing and testing various new components of the Observatory. The team will be on board the CCGS John P. Tully with the CSSF ROV ROPOS to assist with operations in both Saanich Inlet and the Strait of Georgia. The Hydrophone array built by Dr. Svein Vagle and his Ocean Acoustics Group at IOS will be installed in Saanich Inlet on Feb. 21, as will the digital stills camera on Feb. 22. Various site surveys are planned for the Strait of Georgia. More live data, audio, and image samples will follow in the next few weeks.
February 8, 2006, 4:45 AM PST: VENUS Is Up and Running! On February 7, 2006 the first suite of VENUS oceanographic instruments were deployed in Saanich Inlet (see sequence of photos below). After careful inspection by the GMSL ROV, the oil-filled connection hose was pulled to the VENUS Node, and all the Node ports were tested. All systems worked flawlessly, including the initial eight instruments on the VIP. At 4:45 AM February 8, 2006, the VIP was plugged into port 1 and power was brought up, signifying the official launch of the VENUS Observatory. This also starts a “burn-in” test period, during which time the OceanWorks engineers will monitor system performance and the VENUS DMAS staff will finalize testing of data retrieval from the shore station and storage on the UVic servers, as well as the generation of automatic data plots and data products. Shown on the left is the last 24 hours of pressure, salinity, and temperature recorded from the SeaBird CTD mounted on the VENUS Instrument Platform (VIP).
A Huge THANK YOU to all those who have participated to make this happen!
February 6, 2006, 8 PM PST: We’re In The Water! The node has been deployed and the cable installation is complete. Below are some photos from Monday February 6 during the cable lay. The Cable Ship Wave Venture deployed the Node at 6 AM and then laid the cable to shore. The "messenger" (pull line) and cable were floated under buoys. After positioning, the floats were cut free and the post lay survey was started. The deployment of the first instrument suite is planned for early February 7.
February 4, 2006: Saanich Inlet Deployment Imminent:VENUS is busy preparing for the deployment of the Saanich Inlet array. OceanWorks is now in the final stages of testing the first VENUS Node, SIIMs and Instruments, and Global Marine Systems has scheduled their cable laying vessel The Wave Venture to install the cable and node on February 6, 2006.
Several engineering challenges (power supply and ground fault detection circuitry) delayed our original early November deployment, however, the delays have provided vital improvements to the systems which are being thoroughly tested. Initial instrument suites (CTD, ADCP, ZAP, digital camera, hydrophones, etc.) are being prepared by the VENUS technical staff, and data product and retrieval tools are under development by the VENUS and NEPTUNE DMAS team.
Deployment of the first comprehensive instrument systems is scheduled for February 2006 using the CSSF ROPOS remotely operated vehicle. Once "operating" (Feb. 2006), live data feeds will be available on the web page. The launch of a new, exciting, and more comprehensive web page with access to plots of all the data, imagery, acoustics, and a searchable database will follow in March/April.
Deployment of the Saanich Inlet observatory array will be initiated during the weekend of February 5-6, 2006. The in-water portion of the array will be on-board the Wave Venture. This includes the armoured fibre optic cable and the VENUS node, which represents the "socket" for observatory instruments.
First, the node will be lowered to a designated site within the VENUS observatory permit area at approximately 100 m depth in Saanich Inlet. The 3.5 km cable will be pulled ashore to an observatory shore station a the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Patricia Bay.
The shore station will provide the infrastructure with power and a back-haul connection to the Internet. The electronics housed in the node will distribute 400 VDC power and 100 MB Ethernet communications to up to 8 wet-mateable instrument ports.
Instrument suites will then be deployed at specific sites of scientific interest in the area of the node and a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) will be used to connect the instruments to the node. Initial instruments will include a conductivity, temperature and depth (CTD) unit for measuring temperature, salinity and pressure, an acoustic Doppler current profiler (ADCP) for measuring currents, a Zooplankton Acoustic Profiler (ZAP) for mapping the vertical distribution of zooplankton, a high-resolution digital camera for studying marine organisms, and a broadband ambient sound hydrophone array for studying marine mammal vocalizations.
From the Network Operations Centre within the VENUS offices at UVic, the observatory infrastructure and connected instruments will be powered-up, tested, controlled, and monitored. Data and images from the sensors will be archived by the joint Data Management and Archiving System (DMAS) of the VENUS and NEPTUNE Projects. Access to the observatory instruments and data will "go-live" over the Internet in March, 2006.
June 17,2005 The VENUS and NEPTUNE Projects are seeking a term limited (Dec 2008) Web Site Developer (competition 5179). All applications must be received by UVic Human Resources by June 30, 2005.
Saanich Inlet Node
May 20, 2005 VENUS is pleased to announce the signing of a major contract for installation of the cabled observatory Node in Saanich Inlet. The University of Victoria, on behalf of VENUS, and Global Marine Systems Ltd, representing its Canadian partner Ocean Works International signed the agreement on May 20, 2005. The newly designed seafloor Node will offer many enhancements over initial plans, including higher communication rates, higher instrument capacity, and improved maintainability. A follow-on contract to build and install the array in the Strait of Georgia is now under negotiation. Due to budgetary constriants, however, the VENUS array in Juan de Fuca Strait will not be installed at the present time. For additional information on the infrastructure and instrument planned for Saanich Inlet and the Strait of Georgia, please visit the dedicated array links on the main menu.
July, 2004: VENUS and NEPTUNE Contract DMAS Study A desktop study to initiate the Data Management and Archiving System (DMAS) effort has been awarded to Barrodale Computing Services Ltd. The study will review existing database systems and the requirements for the VENUS & NEPTUNE DMAS.
May, 2004: UVic Negotiates Collaborative Agreement with Potential Partner UVic has entered into negotiations with Global Marine Systems and OceanWorks to design, build, test, and deploy the wet plant portion of the VENUS observatories. It is hoped that UVic, in partnership with GMSL and OW will work to design and install a fully implemented observatory meeting the proposed scientific objectives in the next 20 months.
February 13, 2004: UVic Posts RFQu 004 for VENUS Partner The University of Victoria has posted a Request for Qualifications (RFQu 004) by interested and qualified system suppliers to design, engineer, manufacture, assemble and test the underwater infrastructure, shore stations, and Network Operating Centre (NOC) of the Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea (VENUS) Project, a subsea electro-optical cabled observatory system. For official details please visit the BC Bid Web Site for RFQu files and attachments.
