Funded by the National Science Foundation, the overall OOI programme is managed by Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The moored, mobile autonomous, and cabled sensors provide real-time data access to address critical issues such as climate change, ecosystem variability, ocean acidification, and carbon cycling.  The observatory consists of:

• The Coastal & Global Scale Nodes (CGSN) which include sensor arrays moored off the coast of Massachusetts, Alaska, and Greenland, operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution,
• The Endurance Array (EA) off the coast of Oregon and Washington, operated by Oregon State University,
• The Regional Cabled Array (RCA), a submarine cable network of sensors and instruments, operated and managed by the University of Washington,
• As well as the Cyberinfrastructure, managed by Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

After deploying a third party ROV for several years it was concluded that a dedicated underwater robotic vehicle could be a significant addition to the suite of tools available to the programme and provide operational flexibility, as well as scheduling and budget optimisation.

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