OOIPy: A Python toolbox for accessing and analyzing data from the Ocean Observatories Initiative
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The recent advent of long-term, large-scale, and publicly available underwater acoustic datasets can unlock new discoveries and fuel a deeper understanding of the ocean environment. One such dataset is provided by the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), who maintain multiple research arrays distributed across the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean that feature a variety of instruments and platforms from hydrophones to water column profilers and surface buoys. However, analyzing the OOI data can be challenging, as tools for accessing the data are either completely lacking, or require a significant amount of additional programming effort to prepare data for analysis. With the development of the Python package OOIPy we aim to address these problems for the OOI data products. OOIPy combines low level functions for accessing OOI data in Python with higher level functions for data processing, analysis, and visualization. Currently, data products from low-frequency and broadband hydrophones, which are only available through the OOI raw data server, as well as conductivity, temperature, depths sensors in the northeast Pacific Ocean are supported. Our vision for the future is to expand OOIPy and allow scientists to focus on the analysis, rather than the accessing and preprocessing, of OOI data products. [Work supported by ONR.]