2003-2004 upgrades and additions to the Hawaii-2 Observatory

A permanent deep ocean scientific research facility the Hawaii-2 Observatory (H2O) was installed on the retired HAW-2 commercial submarine telephone cable in September 1998. H2O consists of a seafloor submarine cable termination and junction box in 5000 m of water located halfway between Hawaii and California. In 2003, a major upgrade to the communications architecture was completed, and the buried broadband seismometer the previously installed at H2O was augmented by two seafloor geomagnetic observatories, the small experiment module and the benthic biology experiment. During 2004, a borehole seismometer will be installed at ODP Hole 1224D located ∼1.5 km from H2O. All of these experiments will be linked to shore in real-time.