HiSeasNet engineer, Steve Foley, presented a poster at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting on December 7th, 2012. The poster is titled "Efficient use of satellite bandwidth for shipboard science platforms."

HiSeasNet's Atlantic Ocean Region service is now being provided by the IS-23 satellite operated by Intelsat. IS-23 replaces IS-707 in Intelsat's satellite fleet, and is currently providing cleaner, stronger signals for the AOR ships and British Antarctic Survey station on South Georgia Island. The transition went smoothly with only about 1 minute of outage, and all stations appear to be operating normally again.

For the NOAA/NSF sponsored Submarine Ring of Fire 2012 cruise (Sep 9-26, 2012), R/V Revelle is hosting an ROV exploring underwater thermal vents in the Lau Basin. In order to support real-time streaming video from the seafloor, HiSeasNet temporarily expanded the ship-to-shore bandwidth from the normal 96kbps to 1.6Mbit. The video from this link is being streamed at http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/12fire/media/12firestream_pla... for all to view during the ROV dives. Follow along with the cruise via its website at http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/12fire/welcome.html.

HiSeasNet engineer, Steve Foley, will present a poster at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting on December 7th, 2011. The poster is titled "Data stream mobility across shipboard satellite networks."

As the R/V Point Sur (MLML) returned from operations in the Gulf of Alaska today, the R/V Wecoma (OSU) has taken up its satellite connection through the Galaxy-18 satellite operated and downlinked by Intelsat. They are operating with a 64kbps link that is ultimately routed through the HiSeasNet earth station facility.

On 20 June 2010, R/V Kilo Moana temporarily expanded its ship-to-shore link from 96kbps to 1100kbps. The expansion lasted one week as the ship worked a good ways off the coast of Hawaii. With the extra bandwidth, they were able to very quickly send high-resolution edited movies from the ship back to shore. They also spent some time testing and using higher bandwidth videoconferencing equipment for outreach purposes.

As the R/V Point Sur works in the Gulf of Alaska for a couple of months, their HiSeasNet coverage is handled through a short-term lease of time on the Galaxy-18 satellite. Their link is terminated at an Intelsat earth station, then sent to San Diego for inclusion in the rest of the HiSeasNet routing system.

WHOI's R/V Knorr is operating in the Indian Ocean during the month of April, 2010. Since the Indian Ocean is not visible from the HiSeasNet Earth station in San Diego, the ship is linked to the Internet through the Intelsat IS-906 satellite and a teleport in Fuchsstadt, Germany. The bandwidth is 64kbps to and from the ship.

Scientists from the COMARGE and ChESS projects of the Census of Marine Life recently completed the “INSPIRE: Chile Margin 2010” cruise aboard the Scripps Institution of Oceanography's RV Melville. Partnering with the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and the Inner Space Center and Office of Marine Programs based at URI's Graduate School of Oceanography, the INSPIRE team used the HighSeasNet network to support a NOAA Signature Cruise Website and live ship-to-shore broadcasts presented in both English and Spanish. A 13-minute overview video introduced each live broadcast.

HiSeasNet has expanded its bandwidth in the Pacific Ocean Region. Using the NSS-9 satellite, HiSeasNet provides 512kbps shore-to-ship service for 4 ships. This is an improvement from the 256kbps offered on the Intelsat-701 satellite.