PacIOOS wave buoy off Hanalei, Kaua'i.

 

The PacIOOS wave buoy off Kaua'i's North Shore is back online! The wave buoy was successfully redeployed in mid-March, and continues to serve data on wave height, direction, period, and sea surface temperature. The information recorded promotes safer and more efficient maritime transit, and provides ocean users with real-time data.

 

Data are managed by the Coastal Data Information Program (CDIP) at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Long-term partnerships between PacIOOS, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and CDIP enable data streaming into the PacIOOS website and PacIOOS Voyager.

 

 

Map of the Mamala Bay Study Area

In collaboration with the City and County of Honolulu, Division of Environmental Quality, PacIOOS now features the Mamala Bay Study. The purpose of the Mamala Bay Study was to observe the physical, chemical, biological and geophysical nature of Mamala Bay and surrounding areas in an effort to detect influences from point and non-point source pollution.

 

The study areas extended offshore of the Mamala Bay coastline and included all ocean areas from Diamond Head to Barber's Point, O'ahu. In addition, the study encompassed areas of significant non-point sources that affected water quality of near-shore waters, such as the Ala Wai Canal. All collected scientific data helped achieve the overall goal of the Mamala Bay Study, which was to develop a water quality management plan for Mamala Bay.

 

 

 

Coastlines of the Main Hawaiian Islands.

Voyager now provides a coastline overlay, which can be found under the navigation, geographic boundaries drop-down. Overlapping map layers can make it difficult to see the underlying basemaps. Therefore, PacIOOS has gathered data from various sources to display coastlines, and to better elucidate the location of islands and other geographic features. This layer also provides a set of four output styles, including thin or thick outlines in either black or white to optimize visibility.

 

Voyager displays the coastlines for PacIOOS supported regions, including American Samoa, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Hawai'i, Palau, Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the U.S. Pacific Remote Island Areas.

 

 

Underwater cables throughout the Pacific and  continental United States.

Voyager has expanded its underwater cables layer that originally only extended to the Main Hawaiian Islands. The overlay was replaced with a Web Map Service (WMS) provided by NOAA's Office for Coastal Management (OCM), which covers the coastal and offshore regions of the entire United States, as well as Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

 

The underwater cables layer also includes cables reaching into the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, Johnston Atoll, Palymra Atoll, Kingman Reef and the continental United States.

 

Due to slow page loading times in Safari and Internet Explorer, PacIOOS has improved its initial page loading time in Voyager with the result that page speed has tripled! Enabling compression of the PacIOOS web server, leveraging browser caching, converting images to sprite sheets, minifying CSS and JavaScript asynchronously, refactoring code base, and removing obsolete or deprecated features, allow for a faster initial page load to enhance the user experience. For any further suggestions for improvement, please contact us at info@pacioos.org. Your feedback is always appreciated!

 

 

PacIOOS is excited to welcome a new Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) partner. The Mariana Islands Nature Alliance (MINA) is a community-based, nonprofit organization that was formed to promote the protection and restoration of the natural resources in the Northern Mariana Islands. MINA believes that fostering community watch and outreach efforts will accomplish the long-term goals towards a sustainable future. PacIOOS is looking forward to partnering with MINA! If your organization would like to become a PacIOOS MOA partner, please contact us!

 

All eleven IOOS regional associations met with the IOOS program office in Washington, D.C., for the annual IOOS Spring Meeting. Discussions focused on increasing data integration across the system, improving the nation's resilience to extreme events with ocean observations, partnering with NOAA's Ocean Acidification Program, expanding ecological forecasting, and much more. The National Ocean Service (NOS) provided updates on items such as the new Office for Coastal Management and NOS priorities. Members also attended the IOOS Association Board of Directors meeting. While in D.C., PacIOOS provided Congressional staffers from the Pacific Islands region with updates on current operations. 

The IOOS Association is seeking applications for a part-time Program Coordinator position to assist with communications and program administration. If you have strong communications and organizational skills, and you like to work independently and with a diverse set of people, this position might be the right fit for you! The IOOS Association is a small non-profit organization that works with the eleven Regional Associations that operate coastal observing systems as part of the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS). The Program Coordinator will provide project coordination and programmatic support for the IOOS Association, including internal and external communications, administrative assistance and specialized support to members, Board of Directors and regional associations directors, under the supervision of the IOOS Association Executive Director. Bachelor's Degree and demonstrated work experience are required to qualify. Applications are due by April 24, 2015. For more information, visit www.ioosassociation.org or contact Josie Quintrell jquintrell@comcast.net.