In deep water

If it was not already obvious, last year’s Boxing Day tsunami hammered home the point with devastating force: we know next to nothing about what is happening beneath the world’s oceans. However, an ambitious European project to install and network up to 120 deep-sea observatories early next decade will, for the first time, supply scientists with continuous real-time monitoring of what is really going on down there in the mysterious depths of the sea.

The European Seafloor Observatory Network (ESONET) is large both in scale and ambition. Around 10 regional networks of cabled underwater observatories will be installed at an estimated cost of around €200m (£140m). From the Arctic north to the milder waters of the southern Mediterranean, ESONET will provide real-time images and data from an area of approximately 3,000,000km² at depths of up to nearly 5km beneath the surface. Incorporating a vast array of scientific instruments, sea-floor sensors, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and more than 5,000km of fibre optic sub-sea cables, it will also provide the sub-sea component of the EU’s Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme, monitoring the seabed for seismic activity that could lead to tsunamis.