Ocean tides and winter surface storms are among the main factors driving the dynamics and spatial structure of marine coastal species, but the understanding of their impact on deep-sea and hydrothermal vent communities is still limited. Multidisciplinary deep-sea observatories offer an essential tool to study behavioural rhythms and interactions between hydrothermal community dynamics and environmental fluctuations. Here, we investigated whether species associated with a tubeworm vent assemblage respond to local ocean dynamics. By tracking variations in vent macrofaunal abundance at different temporal scales, we provide the first evidence that tides and winter surface storms influence the distribution patterns of mobile and non-symbiotic hydrothermal species (i.e. pycnogonids sp. and Polynoidae polychaetes) at more than 2 km depth. Local ocean dynamics affected the mixing between hydrothermal fluid inputs and surrounding seawater, modifying the environmental conditions in vent habitats. We suggest that hydrothermal species respond to these habitat modifications by adjusting their behaviour to ensure optimal living conditions. This behaviour may reflect a specific adaptation of vent species to their highly variable habitat.
As part of the NEPTUNE‐Canada cabled seafloor observatory, an array of six high‐precision bottom pressure recorders was installed in the late summer of 2009 at depths from 100 to 2600 m seaward of the southwest coast of Vancouver Island in the northeast Pacific. The instruments transmit 1‐sec bottom pressure data at roughly 0.1 mm equivalent sea level height to the Data Management and Archiving System (DMAS) at the University of Victoria. On September 30, 2009, the array recorded waves of 2.5 to 6 cm amplitude associated with the transoceanic tsunami generated by the Mw = 8.1 Samoa earthquake in the South Pacific. These open‐ocean observations were uncontaminated by coastal effects, demonstrating that NEPTUNE records from future tsunami events can be effectively used as realtime input to a regional numerical tsunami forecast model. We validate this proposition by showing that wave forms simulated by the regional model using the leading train of waves of the 2009 event are in good agreement with observed tsunami records for both the shelf stations and nearby coastal tide gauges. Tsunami waves simulated by this model are also significantly more accurate for local regions than those determined by global‐scale tsunami models. This ability to assimilate “pristine” open‐ocean data from the cabled observatory into an operational tsunami forecast model makes it possible to provide updated wave information that could help mitigate the impact of future tsunamis approaching the west coast of British Columbia and northern Washington State.
As ocean acidification (OA) sensor technology develops and improves, in situ deployment of such sensors is becoming more widespread. However, the scientific value of these data depends on the development and application of best practices for calibration, validation, and quality assurance as well as on further development and optimization of the measurement technologies themselves. Here, we summarize the results of a 2-day workshop on OA sensor best practices held in February 2018, in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, drawing on the collective experience and perspectives of the participants. The workshop on in situ Sensors for OA Research was organized around three basic questions: 1) What are the factors limiting the precision, accuracy and reliability of sensor data? 2) What can we do to facilitate the quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) process and optimize the utility of these data? and 3) What sort of data or metadata are needed for these data to be most useful to future users? A synthesis of the discussion of these questions among workshop participants and conclusions drawn is presented in this paper.
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