Design and Application of Ocean Stereoscopic Monitoring System in Shenhu Area of South China Sea

The safe exploitation of deep-sea resources imposes stringent requirements on marine environment monitoring. To overcome the challenges of high cable laying costs and complex construction for cabled ocean observation networks, this paper introduces an Ocean Stereoscopic Monitoring System. This system utilizes a single-point mooring cable that facilitates long-term autonomous monitoring and enables rapid deployment and recovery. It consists of an environmental monitoring buoy, a submersible buoy, an electro-optical-mechanical (EOM) cable for power and data transmission, and a seafloor junction box. The buoy is powered by solar panels and batteries. It supplies energy to underwater nodes via the EOM cable, while collecting monitoring data from the submersible buoy and seafloor junction box. These data are transmitted to a shore station through satellite communication. This system enables real-time, stereoscopic monitoring of marine dynamics and thalassochemical variations at the air-sea interface, within the water column, and in the seabed boundary layer, while providing wet-mate connectors for integration with other benthic observation nodes. It can serve as a critical node device for establishing deep-sea bottom observation network. In December 2023, the system was deployed at a depth of 1,330 m in the natural gas hydrate (NGH) area of the northern South China Sea, where it successfully completed its sea trial.