Cabled ocean observatories:  As Director
of the $150 million NEPTUNE Canada Project, most of my academic time during
2001-2011 was spent in directing the design, funding, installation and initial
operation of NEPTUNE Canada. This is the world’s first regional cabled ocean
observatory. It will revolutionize the ocean sciences and provide real-time
data from hundreds of remotely operated sensors (c. 50TB/yr) over a 30-year
period (www.oceannetworks.ca). The observatory includes an 800km
backbone cable with five major nodes that bring abundant power (10kV DC) and
high bandwidth (10Gb/sec) communications to hundreds of sensors that form a
network that extends from the coast across the northern part of the Juan de
Fuca tectonic plate. Nodes are located in water depths ranging from 100m near
the coast to nearly 3000m at the ocean spreading ridge and the abyssal plain.
The observatory involves scores of scientists, a consortium of 12 Canadian
universities led by UVic and many international scientists and collaborating
institutions and a staff of 45 (ONC now has a staff of over 110). This work has
resulted in me being a member of the Science Advisory Committee of both the
Canadian Ocean Tracking Network (led by Dalhousie Univ.) and the Canary Islands
ocean observatory (PLOCAN) and being the founding Chair of the UN
ITU/WMO/UNESCO IOC’s Joint Task Force on SMART ocean cables for monitoring
global climate and sea level change and tsunami hazard (2012-16).

Geology:  Paleozoic stratigraphy,
paleontology, paleoecology, paleobiogeography; biological and chemical events
in ancient oceans; conodont paleobiology; Cenozoic offshore basins, BC.

 Earth/ocean sciences: SMART cabled
ocean observatories.

Management of earth/ocean departments at three universities and one government agency; Director of major earth/ocean research initiatives.