Minister of State Goodyear Tours NEPTUNE Canada

VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - Aug. 29, 2011) - The Honourable Gary Goodyear, Minister of State (Science and Technology), was at the University of Victoria's Technology Enterprise Facility yesterday to visit NEPTUNE Canada.
During his tour, the Minister of State was given a demonstration of NEPTUNE's deep-sea underwater observatories as well as its Oceans 2.0 web-based information sharing network.

"Science drives our economy and improves the quality of life of Canadians," said Minister of State Goodyear. "Through our government's support, NEPTUNE Canada will be able to not only perform the research that will give us the knowledge to better understand and protect ourselves from earthquakes, tsunamis and climate change, but also make the discoveries that will lead to new technologies and opportunities for Canadian businesses."

The Minister of State also took the opportunity to personally congratulate the organization on its new director, Dr. Kate Moran.

Dr. Moran, who will start her five-year term in September, is a world-renowned ocean engineer. She comes to NEPTUNE having just completed a two-year term as the assistant director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Prior to advising President Barack Obama's administration on the oceans and the Arctic, Dr. Moran was a professor of oceanography and associate dean of the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island. Dr. Moran succeeds NEPTUNE's founding director Dr. Chris Barnes, who retired at the end of June.

NEPTUNE is the world's most advanced deep sea cabled network of observatories. The network gathers live data from a variety of instruments deployed across a wide array of undersea environments. Data are transmitted via high-speed fibre optic communications from the sea floor to an innovative data archival system at the university.

NEPTUNE Canada, along with partner organizations VENUS and Ocean Networks Canada's Centre for Enterprise and Engagement (ONCCEE), is managed by Ocean Networks Canada and was established by the University of Victoria.

The Government of Canada has provided funding to Ocean Networks Canada through the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

ONCCEE is a federally funded Centre of Excellence for Commercialization and Research with a mandate to maximize the socioeconomic benefits of the cabled ocean observatories.