MOSES - COSYNA Underwater Observatories at AWI

Since 2012, the Alfred-Wegener-Institute operates two shallow-water cabled underwater observatories (UWO’s) in the Southern North Sea North off Helgoland (Helgoland-UWO - 54° 11.700'N /  7° 52.600'E – Fig. 1) and in the Arctic Ocean in Spitzbergen (Svalbard-UWO - 78° 55.200 / 11° 54.00 – (WGS84) - Fig. 2). The systems were developed in close cooperation with the Helmholtz Centre Geesthacht (HZG) within the framework of COSYNA.

Since 2014, both observatories are part of the infrastructure project ACROSS. Since 2016, the Helgoland UWO is part of the EU-Project Jericho Next and since 2018 part of the MOSES project.

Both systems are operated year round with the objectives to:

• Provide near real-time data (NRT-Data) of the main hydrographical variables of the two AWI research sites “Southern North Sea” and “Kongsfjord”.
• Provide underwater power and data connection for short-term or long-term project based sensor exposure for AWI research groups and cooperating research partners.
• Providing an underwater test facility for new sensors and sensor developments for AWI research groups, cooperating research partners and cooperating companies.