The Ocean Tracking Network (OTN) and Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) have partnered/collaborated/supported projects involving mooring deployment on the Halifax Line on the Scotian Shelf from 2008 to 2016. Starting in 2008, the Ocean Tracking Network, with the support of DFO, maintained an acoustic receiver curtain to track movements of a variety of acoustically tagged species moving laterally along the East Coast continental shelf, as well as year round and seasonal residents in the Halifax Region. The OTN Halifax line spans the entire width of the continental shelf off Halifax and consists of hydrophone moorings at 800 m spacing over a total length of almost 205 km. In addition to acoustic receivers, several of these moorings contain benthic pods. The benthic pods are instrumented packages that provide time series of bottom pressure (sea level height), dissolved oxygen, temperature and salinity. They were designed in collaboration with Satlantic, and can be deployed to a depth of 330m. The objective of these pods was to monitor and report key oceanographic parameters to provide environmental context to animal movements and validation data to sophisticated biogeochemical and physical ocean models. The sensors mounted include:
The STOR-X controls the sampling of the oceanographic instrumentation. The sensors sample for 30s every hour on the hour. Data stored on the receivers or benthic pods can be recovered via acoustic modem from either vessels or autonomous vehicles such as gliders.
Some of the data from the benthic pods were processed by the Bedford Institute of Oceanography (BIO). Details about the project and the data processing by BIO is given here: https://gliders.oceantrack.org/data/pod/
