ULTRAMOOR: a 5-year current meter mooring

The prototype ULTRAMOOR design is a subsurface mooring that supports 10 (or more) discrete acoustic current meters. Travel time and acoustic Doppler sensors are being evaluated. Each current sensor is equipped with a small, low power acoustic transmitter that transfers compressed data from the instrument to a receiver located below the euphotic zone (nominally at 500-m depth). The acoustic receiver forwards these data to an array of up to 10 expendable data capsules. In a typical scenario a capsule would release every 6 months over a 5-year deployment interval. Each capsule contains 4 Mbytes of solid-state memory and an Orbcomm transceiver, which transfers the data via satellite as the capsule drifts away from the mooring. The initial deep ocean test of the ULTRAMOOR prototype will be conducted from July to November 2000 offshore Bermuda. This paper describes the overall system design and discusses its scientific applications.