News from the Region

January 2013

PacIOOS Strategic Operational Plan 2013-2018

The PacIOOS Governing Council has approved the PacIOOS Strategic Operational Plan for 2013-2018. This document outlines the program's goals, objectives, and action items within each of our focus areas for the next five years. The Plan demonstrates a continued commitment to a process that builds and sustains a resilient observing system throughout the Pacific for the coming years.

Additional Stories:

• Upcoming PacIOOS Webinar on Coastal Hazards Data, Tools, and Forecasts on Wednesday, February 13, 2013, at 2:00 PM (HST)
• New Wave Buoy Pages on PacIOOS Website
• What's New in PacIOOS Voyager?

Fall 2012

PacIOOS Voyager Released for all U.S. affiliated Pacific Islands

PacIOOS is excited to announce that ocean enthusiasts, researchers, resource managers, and the general public now have a new interactive online mapping platform with the release of "Voyager" (http://pacioos.org/voyager).

Read more at the October, 2012 newsletter. 

 

Summer 2012 Stories

Read further Details in the August 2012 edition:

• PacIOOS Releases Technical Report on High Water Level Forecasting

  Presently, PacIOOS serves 7-day forecasts of high coastal water levels for nine locations in the Pacific Islands region.  Designed to complement the detailed forecast information available online--PacIOOS has generated this report to provide more on the methodology behind the forecast model analysis and development.
  
  

• PacIOOS Wave Buoys Lead NDBC Data Requests

  In the past three years, PacIOOS has more than doubled the number of wave buoys in the US Pacific Islands and continues to plan for more deployments in the coming months....

• Introduction to PacIOOS Data Servers

  PacIOOS hosts six primary data servers to make it easier to find, access, and download ocean data from the US Pacific Islands region in a manner that suits your individual needs.

• Predict Particle Drift in Hawaiian Waters with PacIOOS Tool

  PacIOOS operates a suite of numerical ocean circulation models for the main Hawaiian Islands, and makes the forecasts from those models available in many formats for download and exploration.

• PacIOOS Welcomes Three New Partners

  PacIOOS is excited to welcome three new institutional partners to the membership of PacIOOS partners:  U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM),  the Kohala Center, and the Coral Reef Research Foundation.

Read Further Details in the June 2012 Edition:

• New Operational Wave Models Released for Mariana Islands

  PacIOOS has expanded its observing capacity in the insular Pacific over the past few years and is happy today to announce the release of three new operational wave models for the Mariana Islands to complement those observations!

• PacIOOS Receives $2.48 Million in Federal Funding 

  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has awarded $2,488,545 to PacIOOS to support the annual operation of the observing, modeling, data management, and outreach components of the system.

• PacIOOS Welcomes the University of Guam Sea Grant Program as a PacIOOS Partner

  PacIOOS is excited to add the University of Guam Sea Grant Program as a signatory partner.

 

Spring 2012 Stories:

New Ways to Track Real-Time Water Level across the Globe

When the tragic events in Japan occurred in March 2011, PacIOOS realized that there was not one website to turn to that included all the real-time water level stations across the Pacific Ocean.  But that is exactly what concerned citizens across the Pacific wanted to see.  Recently, PacIOOS filled this gap by integrating every real-time water level station on the planet into our Hawai'i Data Explorer. Read more.

New PacIOOS Wave Buoy Deployed off Hilo

Captain Roger Antonio navigated his 35-foot Force, China Girl, in waters off Hawai'i Island to deploy a new PacIOOS Datawell Mark II Waverider Buoy about 6.5 nautical miles northeast of Hilo Harbor. Read more.

Real-Time Data from Wave Buoys easily accessible in PacIOOS Data Explorer

PacIOOS recently integrated the real-time data from all of the Waverider buoys in the U.S., as well as the National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) moored buoys to the Hawai'i Data Explorer.  This enables PacIOOS users to view coastal and open ocean wave data nation-wide.  PacIOOS users can also plot, subset, and download the data directly from the data explorer.

PacIOOS Welcomes the Pacific Marine Resources Institute as New Partner 

PacIOOS is excited to add the Pacific Marine Resources Institute (PMRI) as a signatory partner.  PMRI is a non-profit environmental organization based on Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. Read more.

 

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A New Datawell Mark II Waverider Buoy Deployed by the Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System

The Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System (PacIOOS), a regional component of the Integrated Ocean Observing System, deployed a new Datawell Mark II Waverider Buoy north of Kahului off the Island of Maui, Hawaii.  PacIOOS says this buoy will help to inform safe transit entering and exiting Kahului Harbor, provide real-time data to recreational ocean users (e.g., surfers, sailors, paddlers), and provide critical information for coastal hazard and low-lying inundation forecasts for north-facing shores. Streaming data on wave height, direction, period, and water temperature from this buoy and six others in the PacIOOS Region can be found at the PacIOOS website (www.pacioos.org), the Coastal Data Information Program at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (http://cdip.ucsd.edu), and via Twitter @buoy51205.

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First IOOS Wildlife Data Now Available 

In partnership with NOAA and the Monk Seal Research Program, the Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System (PacIOOS) began providing select tracks of information on monk seals in the Hawaiian Islands earlier this summer. You can plot monk seal locations, animate movement patterns, and explore how seal movement ties in to the physical environment. Click here for an example of one monk seal's movement patterns: http://goo.gl/nCXuE. 

Additionally, an international team of researchers, conservationists, commercial dive operators and government agencies joined together to deploy and operate an array of acoustic devices to monitor the movement of sharks in the waters of Palau. This array, the first of its kind in the waters of Micronesia, supports Palau's world-leading effort to conserve and protect sharks within the whole of their Exclusive Economic Zone.  Initially established by the Micronesian Shark Foundation, the Save Our Seas Foundation, and the Australian Institute of Marine Science, the 14-station array recently expanded with funding from NOAA through PacIOOS. The investment is targeted at increasing the density and geographic range of stations -- providing a more precise and complete picture of shark movement in the Palauan archipelago.

“Sharks are a sentinel species in the global ocean and are important for ensuring the health of all ocean species in the future,” said PacIOOS Director, Chris E. Ostrander.  “Sharks populations worldwide are threatened by increasing illegal fin fishing and a shifting climate.  The Government of Palau’s dedication to conserving shark populations in their waters is an extraordinary step to helping shark populations recover and we are pleased to be able to assist, with our partners, in providing necessary information on shark movement, migration, and mating.”

Press Release by the U.S. Embassy - International Partnership Expands Shark Research in Palau

PacIOOS is also working to make tracks of tuna and turtles across the region available in the near future.

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New Coral Reef Monitoring Tool in the U.S. Pacific Islands

Coral reef managers in the U.S. Pacific Islands will now receive early warning of dangerous environmental conditions that can weaken and kill high value coral reefs. The recent accomplishment is a result of a partnership between NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) and the Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System (PacIOOS), a regional entity of the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS). 

PacIOOS contributed a suite of sensors to a new coral observing station added in Lao Lao Bay, Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands. The station is a first-of-its-kind for the Pacific region and joins a network of three other existing Coral Reef Early Warning System (CREWS) stations established in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Cayman Islands. The sensors monitor ocean conditions, such as air temperature, wind speed and gusts, wind direction, barometric pressure, precipitation, light above and below water, sea temperature, salinity, and state of tide. This information detects warm water conditions that could trigger a coral bleaching event. The station also monitors impacts from sediment and algae blooms that can degrade healthy reefs. 

The data goes to NOAA’s National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) and is included in the World Meteorological Organization’s Global Telecommunications System, making it available for use by weather services all over the world.

Researchers and managers will use collected data to understand the complex physical, chemical and biological processes influencing the health of coral reef ecosystems so that they can better conserve, protect, and manage reef systems.

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About the Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System, PacIOOS

This integrated observing and information system provides information to address:

• Coastal Hazards Resilience: Providing predictions of high water level and inundation events in coastal areas, developing maps of coastline change and identifying areas of vulnerability, and providing beach condition forecasts to users and lifeguards in an effort to promote public safety and community resilience.
  
• Maritime Safety and Security: Serving timely, reliable, real-time information on harbor conditions, coastal and open ocean currents, waves, and weather to improve search-and-rescue operations, spill response, optimize shipping routes, and develop better severe weather and event predictions.
• Coastal Water Quality: Supplying real-time observations of biological, chemical, and physical water parameters to improve our understanding of ocean acidification, more effectively protect healthy coastal marine ecosystems, and enhance the understanding of and response to marine events that impact human health.
• Ocean Planning and Management: Integrating information for effective coastal and marine spatial planning (CMSP), measuring and modeling parameters necessary for the development of climate change mitigation and adaptation plans, and collecting and serving necessary information for renewable energy development.

 

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Resources

The followinmg resources were produced by PacIOOS:

PacIOOS One Pager (pdf)

Voyager Flyer (pdf)

Climate Change One Pager (pdf)

Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning (CMSP) One Pager (pdf)

Sea Level Rise (pdf)

El Niño (pdf)

The following were produced by the IOOS Program Office:

Fact Sheet, 2012 (pdf)

One-Pager, 2011:
IOOS in Action: The U.S. Pacific Islands (pdf)