OBSEA - Expandable Seafloor Observatory

OBSEA is an underwater cabled observatory connected with 4 km of cable to the coast of Vilanova i la Geltrú (Barcelona, Spain) and placed at a depth of 20m in a fishing protected area. Operations are done by scuba divers and small boats. A surface buoy located at 40m from the underwater unit is an extension of OBSEA working as surface platform for measuring oceanographic and environmental parameters. A Shore Station provides power (3.6kW) to feed all the devices and the fiber optic link (1Gbps) to establish communications. At the same time from land we manage alarms and data storage. With a length of 1000 meters the terrestrial cable connects the Ground Station to the Beach Manhole where the submarine cable begins its route to the node location at 4 km from the coast and 20 m depth. OBSEA has nowadays two junction boxes with a total of 16 underwater webmate connectors.