ABSTRACT DEADLINE EXTENDED TO MONDAY, 6 FEBRUARY 2012

You are cordially invited to join us at the Ninth ONR/MTS Buoy Workshop, sponsored jointly by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Marine Technology Society (MTS).

Our 2012 Workshop will be held at the Victoria Marriott Inner Harbour Hotel, in the beautiful city of Victoria, capital of the Province of British Columbia, Canada, our first meeting abroad.  We open with an ice-breaker on Monday evening, March 5th; the Workshop begins on Tuesday, March 6th at 8 am, and ends after lunch on Thursday, March 8th. 

Mission and Purpose

The Buoy Workshop’s mission is to foster the technology and experience exchange in the highly specialized field of oceanographic and other data buoy systems. 

The bi-annual Buoy Workshops – which started in 1996 - are taking advantage of the informal workshop environment to ease open and focused presentations, discussions and exchanges for the benefit of all attendees.  You are invited to report on your work and share successes and failures with established and new buoy system developments.  The workshops have become focused gatherings for researchers, engineers, buoy system technologists and students worldwide to exchange updates of their work and their progress in understanding, practicing and improving the buoy systems.

Buoy Systems – Where are we going

Significant technological aspects and obstacles of oceanographic and ocean engineering buoy systems and their components will be discussed.  Topics for the 2012 workshop will include:    

• Buoy Systems for the “Ocean Observatories Initiative” (OOI) covering Coastal, Regional, and Global Observatories
• Hydrodynamic Modeling of Buoy Systems under current and ocean wave forcing
• At Sea Deployment, Servicing, and Retrieval, Service Life Predictions
• Unexpected or unexplainable Failures, successful Solutions
• Applicable Solutions and Experiences from Offshore Oil Exploration Buoy Systems
• Buoy Design, development of “green “buoys with wave motion power generators
• Buoy Mooring Configurations, Materials, and Components
• Light-Weight EM and EOM Buoy Mooring Cables and their Terminations
• Durable Compliant Wave Motion Absorbing Elements for Observatory Moorings
• Telemetry and Power Linkage between Surface Buoys, In-Line Sensors, and Ocean Bottom Sensors, including survivable Cat5 cables and fiber-optic signal carriers

Abstracts and Presentation Material

An Abstract of 250 to 500 words must be submitted by Monday, 6 February 2012 via http://www.whoi.edu/buoyworkshop/2012/abstracts.html.  Upon acceptance of the abstract, author(s) will be notified by e-mail before Wednesday, 8 February.

Presentation Material Deadline is 5pm [EST], Monday, February 27, 2012. An electronic copy of each speaker’s Power-Point presentation should be e-mailed to rickcole@rdsea.com for pre-loading into the daily file of presentations and onto the workshop computer with a copy to wpaul@whoi.edu.

For abstract questions about abstracts and presentation materials e-mail rickcole@rdsea.com or wpaul@whoi.edu, with a copy to jrizoli@whoi.edu.

Format

The workshop will consist of a Speaker Program with typically 25 to 35 presentations and panel discussions.  The Program is organized in focused topical sessions with typically 20 minute presentations by volunteer speakers. The speakers answer questions in a following panel session. ADD: In addition to the sessions, site visits to the buoy operations group of the Canadian Government’s large Institute for Ocean Sciences (IOS), and the Canadian weather buoy operator AXYS Technologies, whose activities include the deployment and servicing of the large network of Canadian weather buoys ADD:  are planned. AXYS Technologies is this year’s local sponsor of this Buoy Workshop. A CD with the Buoy Workshop 2012 Record will be prepared and mailed after the event.

Registration Fees

The workshop registration fee is $600 for MTS members, $675 for non-MTS members which includes a one-year membership in the Marine Technology Society. A $50 discount is allowed for early registrations before 5pm Monday, February 06, 2012. On-site registrations are subject to a $50 surcharge. For students and retirees the registration is $270, with no discount for early registration. One day registration fee is $175, students and retirees $100.

The registration fee includes the cost of all meals except for Tuesday's dinner, refreshment breaks, and some drinks during the workshop, starting at the ice breaker on Monday evening and ending with a box lunch on Thursday March 8, the departure day.  Also covered is local bus transportation between the Marriott and the planned site visits to IOS and AXYS in nearby Sidney, BC.

Please note that all fees are in USD with exception of Hotel costs.

Exhibitors

We again invite manufacturers and distributors of components and instrumentation for oceanographic buoy systems to exhibit at the workshop and display and discuss their products.  The exhibitor area will be available for visits and exchanges during breaks.  The Exhibitor fee for display tables is $300.  Exhibitors are required to register for the workshop.

Hotel Information

We have reserved rooms at the 4-star Victoria Marriott Inner Harbour Hotel in downtown Victoria for our group.  A special price of $125.74 (Canadian) includes all taxes. To make your room reservation for the Workshop, call 1-866-306-5451 and ask for the BW12 rate.