UW Awarded $126 Million for Ocean Observatory

“Roller” courtesy of Seattlest Flickr pool member Rachel B

UW was awarded $126 million from the National Science Foundation to build an ocean observatory to study the Pacific Ocean. The $126M is part of $385 million being parcelled out by the NSF over 5½ years as part of its ocean observatories initiative, which is intended to build an underwater network to study climate variability and issues in circulation and acidification. UW will get $35 million in 2010 to install about 500 miles of cabling and sensor nodes on the sea floor, which will give researchers real-time access to oceanic data. They'll have their hands full.

NSF researchers in Alaska are already attempting to correlate recent small salmon returns with oceanic acidification. For the layman, that’s the process whereby carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed by the ocean. It affects the ability of fish to build strong skeletons and shells, which affects their size and vitality, which affects fishermen's yield, which affects how many times this winter you get to eat sushi.

We’re hoping the observatory will be involved in studying the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling patch of plastic debris the size of Texas. The Garbage Patch, composed of every sunscreen bottle left on the beach at Discovery Park and every soda bottle you didn’t pick up on the coastline, is already having negative effects on ocean life and diversity, but scientists aren't quite sure to what extent.

Rising ocean temperatures and record lows in Canadian sockeye salmon migrations will probably also be of interest as well.