Marine research requires ever increasing amounts of environmental information with better time resolution and longer data series. Traditional methods are not suited to marine ecosystems with slow dynamics. However, when a system can provide continuous data acquisition over longer periods of time, it is possible to detect climate changes as well as singular events.

OBSEA is a cabled seafloor observatory located 4 km off the Vilanova i la Geltru coast in a fishing protected area. It is connected to the coast by an energy and communications mixed cable.

The main advantages of having a cabled observatory are that it provides an uninterrupted power supply to the scientific instruments and offers a high bandwidth communication link. This way, real time data is available and problems encountered in battery powered systems are avoided. The proposed solution is the implementation of an optical Ethernet network that transmits data continuously to marine sensors connected to the observatory. With OBSEA, we can perform a real time observation of multiple parameters in the marine medium.

The station located on shore provides the power supply and a fiber optics communication link and at the same time carries out alarm management tasks and stores data. This station is connected to the mooring stations 1000m away which is where the marine cable starts its route to the main node, 4km off shore and at a depth of 20m.

Access now the live data here
You must have activated the coockie