Real Time Ocean Science

Just northwest of SeaTac Airport on the shores of Puget Sound are two inconspicuous moorings that house what could be important new tools in oceans research. The Seahurst Observatory, located at Seahurst Park in Burien, consists of installations designed to collect marine information including salinity, temperature, pressure, chlorophyll concentration, currents, sound and video. The innovation in this system is the remote deployment and automated data collection. The researchers intend for this placement to serve as a test-run for installation in 3,000 feet of water in Monterrey Bay and eventually as deep as 2 miles on the Juan de Fuca plate off Washington State's Pacific Coast.

The armchair oceanographers amongst us will be most interested in the project's videos. The Applied Physics Lab at the University of Washington hosts several clips of the most interesting animal life, each collected after motion sensor activation. I recommend checking out the jellyfish on this page, the seal(s) on this page, and the sunflower star on this page.