The EMSO Generic Instrument Module (EGIM): Standardized and Interoperable Instrumentation for Ocean Observation

17 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables.-- Data Availability Statement: The datasets presented in this study can be found in online repositories. The names of the repository/repositories and accession number(s) can be found below: Data from the EGIM, EMSO-Canarias (ESTOC), 2020. SEANOE. https://doi.org/10.17882/83639, https://doi.org/10.17882/83643, https://doi.org/10.17882/83646, https://doi.org/10.17882/83642, and https://doi.org/10.17882/83645. Data from the EGIM, EMSO-Azores observatory, 2017-2018. SEANOE. https://doi.org/10.17882/56665, https://doi.org/10.17882/56528, https://doi.org/10.17882/56501, https://doi.org/10.17882/56525, https://doi.org/10.17882/56626, https://doi.org/10.17882/57005, https://doi.org/10.17882/69867, and https://doi.org/10.17882/69976. Annotated images capturing fish abundances during the first deployment of the EMSO Generic Instrument Module (EGIM) at the OBSEA cabled observatory from December 2016 to April 2017. PANGAEA, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.936693. Data collected during the first deployment of the EMSO Generic Instrument Module (EGIM) at the OBSEA cabled observatory from December, 2016 to April, 2017. PANGAEA, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.883072
The oceans are a fundamental source for climate balance, sustainability of resources and life on Earth, therefore society has a strong and pressing interest in maintaining and, where possible, restoring the health of the marine ecosystems. Effective, integrated ocean observation is key to suggesting actions to reduce anthropogenic impact from coastal to deep-sea environments and address the main challenges of the 21st century, which are summarized in the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Blue Growth strategies. The European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water column Observatory (EMSO), is a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC), with the aim of providing long-term observations via fixed-point ocean observatories in key environmental locations across European seas from the Arctic to the Black Sea. These may be supported by ship-based observations and autonomous systems such as gliders. In this paper, we present the EMSO Generic Instrument Module (EGIM), a deployment ready multi-sensor instrumentation module, designed to measure physical, biogeochemical, biological and ecosystem variables consistently, in a range of marine environments, over long periods of time. Here, we describe the system, features, configuration, operation and data management. We demonstrate, through a series of coastal and oceanic pilot experiments that the EGIM is a valuable standard ocean observation module, which can significantly improve the capacity of existing ocean observatories and provides the basis for new observatories. The diverse examples of use included the monitoring of fish activity response upon oceanographic variability, hydrothermal vent fluids and particle dispersion, passive acoustic monitoring of marine mammals and time series of environmental variation in the water column. With the EGIM available to all the EMSO Regional Facilities, EMSO will be reaching a milestone in standardization and interoperability, marking a key capability advancement in addressing issues of sustainability in resource and habitat management of the oceans
This work was funded by the project EMSODEV (Grant agreement No 676555) supported by DG Research and Innovation of the European Commission under the Research Infrastructures Programme of the H2020. EMSO-link EC project (Grant agreement No 731036) provided additional funding. Other projects which supported the work include Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2017–2020, project BITER-LANDER PID2020-114732RB-C32, iFADO (Innovation in the Framework of the Atlantic Deep Ocean, 2017–2021) EAPA_165/2016. The Spanish Government contributed through the “Severo Ochoa Centre Excellence” accreditation to ICM-CSIC (CEX2019-000928-S) and the Research Unit Tecnoterra (ICM-CSIC/UPC). UK colleagues were supported by Climate Linked Atlantic Sector Science (CLASS) project supported by NERC National Capability funding (NE/R015953/1)