New Wave Media

 

An initiative of the University of Victoria, Ocean Networks Canada operates extensive monitoring networks and undersea observatories for scientific research. One of these is NEPTUNE, the subsea infrastructure for which comprises an 800 km loop of fiber optic cable connected to various instrumented sites (nodes).  

 

NEPTUNE and VENUS (which Global Marine also helped install) are included in the NAZ (North America Zone) maintenance agreement. However, although the cables to the nodes are covered by the agreement, cables from the nodes to the scientific instruments are not. 

 

Global Marine was selected to undertake this additional maintenance contract for a variety of reasons, not least because the company maintains nearly 380,000km of globally installed fiber optic cable out of a total cable maintenance base of 1,060,000km, and can account for 35 PERCENT of maintenance operations performed on fiber optic cables globally.

 

Although the cable recovery work for NEPTUNE completed in October 2015 proved relatively straightforward, the installation of new fiber optic cables provided a far greater engineering challenge, in part because the mechanical subsea structures weigh circa 1.8 metric tons each.

 

“Four cables were installed in total with a pre-jointed mudmat on each end,” explainED Paul Stalley, Assistant Maintenance Agreement Manager at Global Marine. “This took place in extreme seabed conditions and demanded a high level of accuracy with regard to mudmat positioning.” 

 

Successful deployment and positioning required careful monitoring of the subsea plant by Global Marine’s dedicated cable laying vessel in the NAZ, Wave Venture, in combination with touchdown monitoring provided by the Nautilus ROV, Hercules. Thanks to a high level of pre-project engineering capability and solution design, Wave Venture required only passage to install four cables – thus creating savings for the customer.

 

“On behalf of Ocean Networks Canada we would like to extend a large thank you to the Wave Venture crew for their efforts and professionalism, as well as the Global Marine support team and entire NAZ membership for approving this outside work by ONC,” saID Ian Kulin, Associate Director, Operations at Ocean Networks Canada. “Working with the Wave Venture and the Nautilus, all planned work was completed successfully. We will prepare a full report in due course but the work done these last weeks were the two top goals of ONC, so we are ecstatic to have these resolved.”

 

Along with the NEPTUNE cable installations, Global Marine also completed the Barkley Canyon Node reinstatement project for Ocean Networks Canada as part of the NAZ contract. This work firstly saw the Barkley Canyon spur cable recovered with the assistance of Hercules, before Global Marine experts jointed it to the 75m tail of the Barkley Canyon node.

 

“The fully-loaded TRF (trawl resistant frame) was then deployed to the seabed approximately 12m from the Hydrates cable frame in 640m of water,” Stalley SAID. “The Hydrates cable was subsequently plugged into the node by Hercules. Next, the Upper Slope Science cable was recovered ready for ONC technicians to re-terminate. This could then be redeployed to within the required 20m range of the node, allowing it to be plugged in by Hercules.”

 

The completed maintenance operations by Global Marine have reconnected scientific instruments that had been out of action since the node/TRF was damaged by suspected fishing activity in January 2015.