Overview
The Oregon Slope Base Seafloor site is located adjacent to the continental slope off the coast of Oregon at a water depth of ~2,900 meters. The site contains a Medium-Power JBox (MJ01A) and a Low-Power JBox (LJ01A). Here, ocean water properties are profoundly impacted by the California Current, and perhaps internal waves. The coastal region of the Pacific Northwest is a classic wind-driven upwelling system where nutrient-rich deep waters rise to replace warmer surface waters. The result is a large increase in marine productivity that ranges from phytoplankton to fish to marine mammals. Near bottom fauna are periodically negatively impacted by the flow of deep waters with very low oxygen concentrations (hypoxia events), and upwelling of corrosive, acidified waters onto the continental shelf. This area is also just outboard of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which experienced a >9M earthquake January 26, 1700 and which is now characterized by episodic tremors (slow earthquakes).
As with other JBoxes, these rest on the seafloor, contain geophysical and near seafloor water column instrumentation, and are attached to a fiber-optic cable. The fiber-optic cable provides the JBoxes with a significant power and 1 Gb communication bandwidth that provides two-way communication to instruments for their operation and transmission of data to shore. This seafloor site is also co-located with a Deep and Shallow Profiler Mooring, that collect complementary water column data.
When coupled with other Cabled Array and Endurance Array installations off the central Oregon coast, the Slope Base infrastructure provides a wide variety of opportunities for observing seismic and coastal phenomena, including cross-shelf and along-shelf variability.
More information about this site is available at the UW/OOI Interactive Oceans webpage.
Location: 44.5153°N, 125.3898°W · ~2,900 m water depth.