The next-generation of ocean research and educational capabilities will be the topic of discussion as the College of Charleston features a lecture by Professor John Delaney of the University of Washington’s School of Oceanography. The lecture will be held on October 29 in room 118 of College of Charleston Education Building starting at 5 p.m.

Delaney is Director of the Regional Scale Nodes cabled ocean observatory program. This $126 million observatory’s 500-mile network of heavily instrumented fiber-optic/power cable will convert a sector of the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate and its overlying ocean off the Northwest Pacific coast, into an interactive, real-time natural laboratory. Thousands of physical, chemical, and biological sensors distributed across the seafloor, throughout the ocean above, and within the seabed below, will be linked to autonomous robotic platforms that are integrated into interactive networks connected via the Internet to land-based users.

The Regional Scale Nodes is a component of the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative, a program that is building the infrastructure to provide scientists, educators, policy makers, and the public with unprecedented forms of novel information about natural and human-induced processes operating within the ocean basins. For more information: www.interactiveoceans.washington.edu
The program is free and
open to the public.