UVic researchers strengthen Antarctica ocean monitoring<\/p>\n
Published 10:30 am Wednesday, March 11, 2026<\/p>\n
In a partnership with Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) was recently able to double its capacity to monitor the Antarctic Ocean with two new subsea observatories deployed near the Juan Carlos I Antarctic Base on Livingston Island.<\/p>\n
The newly installed observatories transmit near real-time data that can be viewed through ONC\u2019s open online portal, Oceans 3.0. It allows scientists to track environmental change even when the seasonal base is unstaffed.<\/p>\n
ONC Marine Technology Centre staff Ruchie Custan and Bradley Wells were members of the group that travelled to Livingston Island. Speaking to Victoria News, they described their experience of carrying out the work alongside CSIC\u2019s Unit of Marine Technology.<\/p>\n
They replaced an earlier observatory that had suffered data interruptions and installed a second unit, successfully doubling monitoring coverage.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe added a lot more protection to this new observatory to ensure that they can survive through the Antarctic winter and the sea ice,\u201d Custan said.<\/p>\n
The duo described that protecting the equipment from large ice movement was a challenge that had disrupted data flow at the original site. The weather was another challenge the group had to go through.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re waiting for tides, we\u2019re waiting for the wind to die down. It\u2019s extremely windy there all the time, or more often than I would have expected,\u201d Wells added.<\/p>\n
After the 15-day journey started, the group of scientists started noticing differences in the environment in Antarctica. Wells noticed that it was somewhat similar to the Arctic polar region with being extremely rocky, without trees, foliage, and had some moss like lichen.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnother major difference that was quite interesting was the wildlife there. So there\u2019s lots of penguins. There\u2019s elephant seals. There\u2019s birds flying around. There\u2019s lots of wildlife that is very unafraid of humans. They\u2019re not used to people being around, so they\u2019re just there,\u201d said Wells.<\/p>\n
Custan added that his experience in Antarctica to be similar, and also that the harsh environment had their equipment breaking in the field.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy laptop broke. My camera broke. And a few other pieces of equipment broke because of this type of environment. I think those are kind of the things that I wasn\u2019t expecting to happen,\u201d Custan added.<\/p>\n
He also noted that for him personally, Antarctica and the vastness of its geography was awestriking.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeeing the glaciers, huge glaciers, right next to where we\u2019re working. They\u2019re tapping throughout the day as we\u2019re there. You can hear huge booms as the glaciers crack throughout the day.\u201d<\/p>\n
The duo pointed out that this journey was of utmost importance to them as a group of scientists, and also to Canada. Custan said that Antarctica, which is crucial to the global climate system, has undergone a huge change.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd there\u2019s been a call from the scientific community to increase the observations of the Antarctic waters as a whole. So this is the way of Ocean Networks Canada answering that call. So basically, we are enabling near-real-time, year-round ocean monitoring in that part of Antarctica\u2026So we need to understand what\u2019s going on, and so we can act accordingly,\u201d Custan said.<\/p>\n
Agreeing with his colleague, Wells said that studying Antarctica from a global point of view is important. And for the ONC, testing their system in Antarctica was a great opportunity to ensure that it will also work in the Arctic.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd one of our goals in the future and now is to continue pursuing more Arctic research and to eventually, hopefully, deploy more observatories in the Arctic region,\u201d Wells added.<\/p>\n
Also of note is that much of technology that\u2019s implemented to help with the remote monitoring is Canadian made and built by Wells.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re all kind of proud that we\u2019re able to pull this together. I think it\u2019s important to know that ONC keeps pushing forward the boundaries of technology in terms of monitoring the ocean in remote areas and harsh environments like the one in Antarctica.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"UVic researchers strengthen Antarctica ocean monitoring Published 10:30 am Wednesday, March 11, 2026 In a partnership with Spanish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,66],"class_list":["post-529752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}