ESONET Network of Excellence

It aimed at the integration of a community of scientists, engineers and managers for implementing, operating and maintaining a network of ocean observatories in deep waters around Europe from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea connected to shore with data and power links via fibre optic cables. The fundamental scientific objective was to acquire continuous real-time observations of environmental variables over decadal, annual, seasonal, diel and tidal time scales. It provided integration across disciplines from geosciences, through physical, chemical and biological oceanography to technologies of instrumentation, cables, data processing and archiving. ESONET research activities jointly executed by the partners demonstrated the functions of observatories at several cabled and non-cabled sites around Europe. Existing deep-sea cables installed for neutrino telescopes were utilised and shallower tests sites were established elsewhere.