{"id":537059,"date":"2026-08-11T14:44:32","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T18:44:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/ooi-expedition\/?p=537059"},"modified":"2026-08-13T14:52:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T18:52:26","slug":"diving-in-some-of-the-most-biologically-productive-waters-in-the-ne-pacifc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www2.whoi.edu\/site\/ooi-expedition\/diving-in-some-of-the-most-biologically-productive-waters-in-the-ne-pacifc\/","title":{"rendered":"Diving in Some of the Most Biologically Productive Waters in the NE Pacifc"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our first stop was also our shallowest: the Oregon Shelf\u00a0site<\/a>, at just 80 m water depth and about an hour from Newport. But shallow means anything but simple. At this site, high currents and low visibility due to abundant biology and well stirred sediments can make it impossible to see even a foot in front of the ROV. For this reason, we like to start at this site early in the expedition rather than leave it until the end. The timing of the tides and weather can make a massive difference in success at this site, so having a couple of runs at the Oregon Shelf during the cruise and make all the difference in completing our work at this site. So, there was some anxiousness on what we would find as\u00a0Jason<\/em>\u00a0descended.<\/p>\n

This year, however, we were very lucky. Over three efficient dives,\u00a0Jason<\/em>\u00a0was able to swap all the equipment in about 12 hours. First, the Benthic Experiment Package (BEP) was turned. The BEP is a low powered\u00a0junction box<\/a>\u00a0hosting a few instruments inside the\u00a0platform<\/a>, with several other instruments deployed at a distance with communication and power supplied by cables extending from the junction box.<\/p>\n

This year marks a new design for the BEP at the Shelf site. The 2026 BEP looks like a standard green junction box rather than the low yellow, walled version that was originally designed for the site. This shift is because, while the low profile, and low walls were meant to make the BEP trawl resistant in case a fisherman accidently dragged a net over the equipment, the protective walls have instead become a trap for the abundant sediment at the site leading to instruments clogging. Over the next year our data team will monitor the instruments on this new BEP and assess how the design changes have improved data quality.<\/p>\n

A second, dive turned the digital still camera that photographs the bottom and the critters that live there every thirty minutes throughout the year. This year, through the eyes of\u00a0Jason<\/em> we saw Dungeness crabs, wood boring bivalves, dover sole, sea stars, and even hagfish. The third and final dive replaced the zooplankton sonar, a bio-acoustic instrument<\/a> that uses sound to count the tiny drifting animals \u2014 copepods, krill, and their kin \u2014 that form the base of the ocean food web. The very last thing we did at this site is release a calibration sphere that floats above the sonar on a very thin fiber \u2013 the acoustic \u201cpings are reflected off the sphere. This helps confirm the sonar is “imaging” the water column\/organisms correctly. This year the students affectionately logged it as a \u201cballoon\u201d.<\/p>\n

The sonar isn\u2019t the only instrument that we collect calibration data for. On the BEP dive the ROV\u00a0Jason<\/em> captured water samples from the seafloor with Niskins \u2013 gray bottles attached to the side of the vehicle, which can be triggered when needed. These water samples are processed by our team on the boat and analyzed either onboard or back onshore for environmental parameters that include dissolved oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nutrients concentrations, and chlorophyll (as a proxy for phytoplankton) to provide accurate values to compare data from the recently\u00a0recovered<\/a>\u00a0and freshly installed sensors against.<\/p>\n

The shallow shelf may not look as dramatic as some of the sites we will visit, but scientifically it punches well above its weight. These are among the most productive waters on Earth, where summer winds drive upwelling that feed enormous blooms of life \u2014 and, in recent years, seasonal low-oxygen “dead zones” that can suffocate crabs and fish along the Oregon coast. The instruments we service here watch that story unfold in real time, season after season, giving scientists and fishermen alike a continuous \u201ceye\u201d into the changing coastal ocean.<\/p>\n\n\t\t