ASL to Supply Sonar Instruments for OOI CGSN

The Consortium for Ocean Leadership (OL) and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) announced ASL Environmental Sciences Inc. will provide Un-Cabled Bio-acoustic Sonar Instruments for the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Coastal and Global Scale Nodes (CGSN).

WHOI, an implementing organization on the OOI Program, awarded an Indefinite Quantity Contract with a maximum total value of up to $1,681,375 over 2.5 years to ASL Environmental Sciences Inc. (ASL). Under the terms of the contract, ASL will supply up to 16 instruments for the Coastal Scale Nodes and up to 10 instruments for the Global Scale Nodes.

ASL will supply its off-the-shelf Acoustic Zooplankton Fish Profiler (AZFP) instruments to meet the CGSN specific requirements. Four-frequency internally-powered, internally-recording AZFP echosounders with 38, 125, 200 and 455 kHz channels will be supplied for use on the Coastal Scale Node and operate for 7 months or longer on their own power. On the Global Scale nodes, each will have a dual set of AZFPs, each with 38, 70, 125 and 200 kHz channels (one will point up and the other will point down) to operate for up to 13 months without recovery. The first units are scheduled to be delivered in latter half of 2014.

Founded in 1977, ASL Environmental Sciences is a well-established employee-owned company with experience in oceanographic, acoustic and ice research services. Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, the company’s 50 staff members provide clients with scientific consulting services and oceanographic instruments. In the early 1990’s, ASL started manufacturing battery-powered, upward-looking echosounders for studying ice and zooplankton. Since early the 2000’s, ASL has built a substantial number of self-powered bioacoustics sonars. Many have been deployed for year-long deployments in the Arctic Ocean. Reliability of the autonomous instrument deployments has been very high with 95% success rate based on % data recovery.

The project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) is planned as a networked infrastructure of science-driven sensor systems to measure the physical, chemical, geological and biological variables in the ocean and seafloor. As a fully integrated system, OOI will collect and disseminate data on coastal, regional and global scales. Greater knowledge of the ocean’s interrelated systems is vital for increased understanding of their effects on biodiversity, climate change, ocean and coastal ecosystems, environmental health and climate. WHOI and its partners, Oregon State University and Scripps Institution of Oceanography are responsible for the OOI coastal and global arrays.

Press Release, June 20, 2014