Tsunami sensors will give Islanders 30- minute warning, vital information

High- tech models will affect planning of West Coast development

Deep, deep in the ocean, about 200 kilometres off the coast of Vancouver Island, an array of tsunami sensors, to be installed next month, will warn of impending tsunamis and offer vital information about where they might hit hardest.

“This new technology will provide early warning information that will potentially protect lives and property,” said Kate Moran, director of North- East Pacific Time- series Undersea Networked Experiments Canada, also known as NEPTUNE.

Using information from the sensors, NEPTUNE researchers will refine models of how tsunami waves approach the B. C. coast, said Moran.

The sensors will be placed in the shape of a star, with each fibre- optic cable arm stretching out for between 20 and 25 kilometres. The system will give Vancouver Islanders about a 30- minute warning of a tsunami, said Kim Juniper, NEPTUNE’S associate science director.

It will also provide information about the direction and size of waves, he said.

Models compiled from the sensor information should provide essential tools for planning development along the Island’s west coast, Juniper said.

“As we make decisions as to where we can build along the west coast of Vancouver Island and elsewhere, we have to take into account the risk of a tsunami reaching shore.”

NEPTUNE, the world’s first regional cabled ocean observatory, which streams data from an 800- kilometre loop of fibre- optic cable under the Pacific Ocean to scientists and students all over the world, is managed by Oceans Networks Canada and led by the University of Victoria.

The first sensors for the deepsea tsunami antenna will be installed at a depth of about 2,700 metres during a monthlong voyage, leaving Sunday, on the 274- foot research vessel Thomas G Thomson.

“We won’t get them all in this time, so we’ll finish in October, but they’ll be operational as soon as the first ones are plugged in,” Juniper said.

At the end of each of the four fibre- optic cable arms will be a sensitive, made- in- B. C. bottom pressure recorder, providing real- time data to scientists and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Network.

NEPTUNE installed single sensors about three years ago, Juniper said.

Now, with the planned star array, researched by Fisheries and Oceans senior scientist Richard Thomson, the gear will be so sensitive that data will be fed to worldwide tsunami centres in Hawaii and Australia.

“The very long arms tell us what direction the wave is coming from and the speed. We have extremely precise timing — down to milliseconds,” Juniper said.

There is particular interest in communities such as Port Alberni, which was hit by a tsunami in 1964, after an earthquake in Alaska, Juniper said.

During the expedition, scientists and engineers will also install equipment to warn of upwellings of low oxygen water.

The upwellings from deep water to the continental shelf have killed fish in areas such as Oregon and are likely to happen off the coast of B. C., Juniper said.