Home
> Program
> Keynote Speakers
> The NEPTUNE Project
The goal of the NEPTUNE project is to establish a regional ocean observatory in the northeast Pacific Ocean. The Project’s 3,000-km network of fiber-optic/power cables will encircle and cross the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate in the northeast Pacific Ocean, an area roughly 500 km by 1,000 km in size. Between 30 and 50 experimental sites will be established at nodes along the cable. These sites will be instrumented to interact with physical, chemical, and biological phenomena that operate across multiple scales of space and time. Sensor networks will fill in the volume between nodes and will include multipurpose robotic underwater vehicles that will reside at depth, recharge at nodes, and respond to events such as submarine volcanic eruptions. Via the Internet, the network will provide real-time information and command-and-control capabilities to shore-based users.
Chris Barnes
Executive Team NEPTUNE
Director of the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences
University of Victoria
Chris Barnes represents the University of Victoria on the NEPTUNE Executive Team. He was Director of the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria for the past decade and is also a Professor in that School.
After being awarded his Bachelor of Science from the University of Birmingham (1961) and his Ph.D. from the University of Ottawa (1964), he received an academic appointment at the University of Waterloo in 1965. He served as Chair of Earth Sciences at Waterloo from 1975 to 1981.
In a similar position at Memorial University (1981-87), he established the Centre of Earth Resources Research. From 1987-1989, as Director General, Sedimentary and Marine Branch, Geological Survey of Canada, he was responsible for the offshore Frontier Geoscience Program.
Chris has been a member of the Science Council of British Columbia and its Ocean Sector Committee, and a member of Ocean Drilling Program committees. He has been President of the Pacific Marine Technology Centre Society and Vice President of the Canadian Ocean Frontiers Research Initiative and has served as a Board member of the Institute for Pacific Ocean Science and Technology. He is currently co-leader of the West Coast team in SSHRC/NSERC’s Coasts Under Stress Project.
Other organizations in which Chris has served as president are the Geological Association of Canada, the Canadian Geoscience Council, and the Academy of Science of the Royal Society of Canada. He was Group Chair of both Earth Sciences and Interdisciplinary Committees for the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and is a member of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. He served three terms as Chair of the Council of Chairs of Canadian Earth Science Departments.
His research focuses on understanding the Early Paleozoic world using the principal tools of conodont micropaleontology, stratigraphy, and some geochemistry. He has published over 100 refereed papers on sedimentary geology and paleobiology.
Chris is an Associate Member of the Earth System Evolution Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (RSC), and was appointed to the Order of Canada. He has received the J. Willis Ambrose Medal and the Past Presidents Medal of the Geological Association of Canada (GAC), and the Bancroft Award (RSC).
John Delaney
Program Director
NEPTUNE
Professor of Oceanography
University of Washington
John Delaney is Program Director of NEPTUNE and Chair of the Executive Team.
He is a Professor of Oceanography at the University of Washington, specializing in marine geology. His research focuses on the deep-sea volcanic activity on the Juan de Fuca Ridge in the northeast Pacific Ocean.
He received his BA degree in Geology from Lehigh University in 1964. He then attended the University of Virginia where he received his MS in Geology while concurrently working as a Mineral Exploration Geologist in Charlottesville. In 1977 he earned his PhD in geology at the University of Arizona studying volatiles trapped in the glassy rinds of mid-ocean ridge basalts. He joined the University of Washington faculty in 1977 at the School of Oceanography where he won the Teaching Award in 1980 and the Distinguished Research Award in 1991. He was a visiting scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute and Johnson Space Center from 1977 to 1980.
As a marine geologist, his research focuses on the deep-sea vulcanism of the Juan de Fuca Ridge in the northeast Pacific Ocean. He has served as chief scientist on 20 oceanographic research cruises, many of which have included the Deep Submergence Vehicle ALVIN. In the summer of 1998, Delaney led a joint expedition with the American Museum of Natural History to successfully recover four volcanic sulfide structures from the Ridge. This U.S./Canadian effort was the subject of a NOVA/PBS documentary.
Other activities and honors include being named a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 1995; development and launch of REVEL, a program that provides middle- and high-school teachers with opportunities to participate in sea-going research; and serving on the NASA committee planning a mission to the icy moons of Jupiter.
