A high-tech collection of scientific instruments is making its way to the ocean off North Carolina’s coast. The group, known as the Pioneer Array, contains a combination of 14 moorings, gliders and autonomous underwater vehicles.
Each of these items contains systems that will measure salinity, oxygen levels, nitrates, wave heights, water and air temperature, and a wealth of other data. The AUVs and gliders are programmed to regularly conduct surveys without the need for a human operator. Centered on Cape Hatteras, the array will collect data over the next five to seven years once deployed in Spring of next year.
Two moorings and were tested off the coast of Nags Head in February, where Mike Muglia likes to surf. Muglia is a researcher at East Carolina University’s Coastal Studies Institute (CSI). A self-described “salty ocean nut,” he plans to use the array’s data to test some ideas he’s developed while at sea.
“I have an intuitive feel for what’s happening here,” Muglia, who studies the physical dynamics of the Mid-Atlantic Bight and the estuarine systems that flow into it, said. “I surf, I fish and so I like to tie in the science that I do with trying to understand that.”
From 2016-2022, the Pioneer Array was deployed off the coast of Massachusetts, near Martha’s Vineyard. The Ocean Observatories Initiative oversees and maintains the Pioneer Array. The OOI sought input from the scientific community of where to relocate the Pioneer Array. Now, it's headed to the Mid-Atlantic Bight, a region off the coast of Virginia and North Carolina.
It’s a region of interest. The Mid-Atlantic Bight is where colder water from the north meets warmer, saltier water from the Gulf Stream. It’s where some of the nation’s largest estuaries – the Chesapeake Bay and the Pamlico-Albemarle Sound – mix with the ocean, and it’s one of the world’s most biologically productive areas.
Al Plueddemann is a project scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, or WHOI, in Falmouth, Mass. WHOI is responsible for operating the Pioneer Array. Plueddemann works with other scientists to design the system. He visited North Carolina in February as part of a test run.
While the array spent six years on the New England shelf, Plueddemann says there’s still a lot to learn from the Mid-Atlantic Bight.
“There are some big differences,” he said. “There's the influence of the Gulf Stream offshore, which is very close. There’s the influence of strong storms and hurricanes that tend to come by Cape Hatteras. There is the potential influence of estuaries like the Chesapeake Bay, which can have outflow in certain conditions.”
Muglia, who studies these water masses, says the many years’ worth of data is the Pioneer Array’s main draw. It’ll help to better track changes over time in the Mid-Atlantic Bight’s unique environment.
“It really is the dividing line between all these water masses and what that means is it’s a place where there’s exchange between the deep ocean and the shelf,” Muglia said. “I always say this is like the Mason-Dixon line for oceanography.”
The shelf is where the ocean floor gradually slopes down from the coast, and the deep ocean is where it suddenly drops off like a cliff. The water within these areas hardly ever mixes, creating two distinct environments. How exchange occurs between these two systems is one question that interests scientists, but the Pioneer Array will study more than just the physics of the ocean.
It’s collecting data relevant to biologists, chemists and geologists, as well as fishermen and surfers. The Pioneer Array’s data will be freely available to anyone.
Executive Director of the Coastal Studies Institue Reide Corbett says the array’s move is an opportunity to engage the public, including sharing the data with classrooms.
“There’s an opportunity here to link some of what we’re doing with the science off the coast and using that to engage the community,” Corbett said.
The Pioneer Array is a product of international collaboration through the OOI, funded by the National Science Foundation. The array is in the engineering phase. It’s being designed and outfitted with different instruments. The Array is expected to be deployed off North Carolina’s Coast in Spring of 2024.
Al Pluddemann will provide an update to the Pioneer Array’s progress Thursday, April 20, as part of the “Science on the Sound” community event series at the Coastal Studies Institute.
