Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI)

The Ocean Observatories Initiative is a US National Science Foundation program of networked ocean observatories delivering continuous, real-time data from the seafloor to the surface. It runs five arrays: the Regional Cabled Array off Oregon, two Coastal Endurance and Pioneer arrays, and two Global arrays at high-latitude sites, combining cabled nodes, moorings, gliders, and AUVs. The cabled array carries power and bandwidth over a submarine cable to instruments at sites including the Axial Seamount caldera at about 1500 m. More than 800 instruments stream open data through the OOI portal. The continuous coverage captures episodic events that ship-based sampling and recovered moorings miss.