AEON Data Portal

The  AEON network started with two observation nodes in the Gulf of Maine, AEON4 Jordan Basin (JOB) and AEON 5 Wilkinson Basin (WIB), in February 2021. Node locations were determined based on an in-depth analysis of regional assets and collaborations, bathymetry and associated sound propagation models, historical and predicted oceanographic features, and ecosystem relevance. A third node was deployed July 2021, AEON3 Georges Basin (GEB), and in January 2022, the network was expanded to five nodes with the deployment of AEON1 Northeast Channel (NEC) and AEON2 Eastern Continental Shelf (ECS) in Canadian waters. As of April 2026, AEON1 NEC and AEON2 ECS were retired and a new node deployed at AEON6 Deep Georges Basin.

AEON data are collected from:

• instruments on the JASCO ALTO bottom-lander that collect data for 6-12 months at each observation node:
  • Autonomous Multichannel Acoustic Recorder (AMAR) - passive acoustics
  • Acoustic Zooplankton Fish Profiler (AZFP) / Wide-Band Autonomous Transceiver (WBAT) - active acoustics
  • Conductivity, Temperature, Optical Dissolved Oxygen (CT-ODO) - hydrographic measurements
  • Fish Tag Receiver (VEMCO) - aquatic animal tracking
• and measurements made during cruises for the deployment and harvesting of bottom-landers:
  • Fine-Scale Acoustic Survey (FSAS) - active acoustics
  • Conductivity, Temperature, Depth (CTD) casts - hydrographic measurements

AEON cruise reports describe the data collected while underway as well as harvested from the bottom-landers during a specific cruise, and provide location and time of instrument deployments and recoveries. These ancillary data address the question of temporal and spatial data correlation for both active and passive datasets. Relatedly, deployment information files provide metadata that describe where and when instruments were deployed and recovered [i.e., site location, AMAR type/model, duty cycles/hertz, latitude, longitude, data collection period (start to stop), channel and frequency information]. Location and time data can be tied to VEMCO fish tag receiver, AZFP/WBAT, and CT-ODO datasets as these instruments are attached to the ALTO lander that holds the AMAR passive sensor. Timing of data harvests reflects cruises, with instruments from a first deployment harvested during a second deployment cruise. For example, if deployed February 2021 and harvested July 2021, data sampling was 5 months.

Data, cruise reports, and deployment information files may be accessed via the links in the tables below. Data are available from long-term public archives (including the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, NCEI, doi:10.25921/3xxc-dy12), and an open-access repository (i.e., Figshare). Please cite these data as Jennifer Miksis-Olds, AEON PI, University of New Hampshire with funding from U.S. Department of Defense, Office of Naval Research Awards N00014-20-1-2312, N00014-23-12767, N00014-24-12740.

Welcome to AEON's Data Portal. Please contact Meredith O'Shea (meredith.oshea@unh.edu) for assistance.

Lander data availability by site and monitoring period 

Initial deployment: February 2021-July 2021, 2 locations

Network expansion: July 2021, 3 locations

Network expansion: January 2022, 5 locations

Network status as of April 2026: 4 locations

"Raw" data: Data collected by the various instruments are considered “Level 0” raw data. Level 0 data are unprocessed instrument-specific or instrument-proprietary binary machine language data that are often unreadable by humans, some software, and common analysis packages. To be useful for science and archiving, machine-data must be processed to what is considered “Level 1” raw data. That is, raw data that can be archived in non-proprietary, non-instrument specific (open) file formats that facilitate long-term data storage and curation. Data generated during this project are in general processed, if necessary, into ASCII, .csv, or .pdf format.

Cruise reports, deployment files, and cruise survey data