WHOI proposes a five-year renewal that follows support provided under OCE-0649621, which will end in March 2012. The WHOI TowCams, operated within the MISO Facility are currently the only routinely available US systems for towed deep-sea digital imaging and short-term time-lapse imaging. The importance of digital seafloor photography for multidisciplinary science, including research that has been conducted at the three Ridge2000 (R2K) Integrated Study Sites (ISSs), and for general geological, chemical and biological oceanography supported by core MGG and Biological Oceanography programs at NSF and within other agencies (e.g., USGS, NOAA), is well documented.
Broader Impacts The principal impact of the present proposal is under criterion two, providing infrastructure support for scientists to use the vessel and its shared-use instrumentation in support of their NSF-funded oceanographic research projects (which individually undergo separate review by the relevant research program of NSF). The support of maintenance and operation of shared-use instrumentation allows NSF-funded researchers from any US university or lab access to working, calibrated instruments for their research, reducing the cost of that research, and expanding the base of potential researchers. All users (or the appropriate funding agencies) share support for basic technical services on the vessel equally, with NSF paying a share of technical support costs based on fractional usage of the vessel during the year.
