Abstract
Beginning in 2002, NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) embarked on an ambitious program to dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of open ocean, deepwater moorings. After decades of traditional size moorings, deployed from traditional, ocean-class oceanographic research vessels, a design evolved to permit them to be deployed from ships of opportunity, by crews untrained in mooring assembly or deployment. The Platform and Instrumentation for Continuous Observation (PICO) mooring was born. It acknowledged that high-frequency sampling of surface and near surface properties have intrinsic value that cannot be addressed by drifting instruments or gliders. The few sites that have had long term observations, OceanSITES time series: PAPA, WHOTS, KEO, BATS[1], are remarkable for their longevity rather than their specific location or the data they produced. Moorings will always offer a capability that other platforms cannot; endurance, quality surface meteorological data, 24/7 data telemetry, and control. What was missing were continuous 2D profile data and affordability. A single sensor suite that profiles is far less expensive than an equivalent string of discrete instruments. The present design costs ~$15K each plus the same again for its CTD and oxygen sensors.