SCIMPI: An origin story.

The first SCIMPI prototype was deployed in May 2013 during IODP Expedition 341S—but that’s not where the story begins. Like many breakthroughs in science, SCIMPI’s origin is a story of vision, persistence, and a dedicated team. It’s also the origin story of Transcend Engineering and its Lead Technologist, Stephen Farrington.

Dr. Kate Moran (now CEO of Ocean Networks Canada) envisioned a comprehensive seabed monitoring system that would be a more cost-effective alternative to a CORK in certain scenarios. Her research required numerous sensors operating in a compact space. With a background that included geotechnical engineering, she was familiar with terrestrial cone penetration testing (CPT) technology and proposed adapting CPT tech for the ocean floor—a bold idea that required rethinking the way ocean borehole monitoring had been done before. The result was a system capable of capturing various measurements (temperature, pressure, conductivity) at predetermined depths.¹

In 2006, Dr. Moran assembled a development team, including Stephen Farrington, then working at ARA. The team needed to design a system suitable for deep-sea deployment. One innovative departure from CPT was using a cable and floats between sensor modules instead of rigid pipe to control spacing. This approach allowed scientists to choose the depths at which measurements could be made—while still on station aboard the drill ship—simply by bringing a variety of lengths of cable segments and choosing how to arrange them based on the coring and logging that had just been performed. This flexibility made SCIMPI significantly easier and less expensive to deploy. Whereas other approaches require a return visit to deploy systems that are custom-built onshore based on the findings of the drilling expedition, the modular SCIMPI system could be configured on the drill ship and installed in a single expedition. The concept was first introduced at the MTS/IEEE OCEANS 2006 conference.²

By January 2010, Stephen left ARA, and since Dr. Moran wished to continue the project with the original development team, Transcend Engineering was born. With Transcend Engineering, SCIMPI underwent a near-complete redesign from the preliminary concept, and the first system, comprising nine measurement modules, was deployed from the JOIDES Resolution in May 2013 during Expedition 341S.

Since then, Transcend has continued to refine SCIMPI’s design and components. In August 2025, the latest version was deployed during ECORD’s Expedition 501: New England Shelf Hydrology, a joint effort between the NSF and IODP³. This deployment provides long-term monitoring of aquifer properties.

Stephen’s team at Transcend Engineering is currently developing additional SCIMPI functionality, making it a valuable component of proposals for upcoming IODP³ missions and aligning it with the IODP³ 2050 Science Framework.

The original SCIMPI system was jointly developed by the University of Rhode Island, Transcend Engineering, and Woods Hole Marine Systems, Inc.

Reference:

1 IODP Preliminary Report 341S
2 Moran, K., Farrington, S., Massion, E., Paull, C., Stephen, R., Trehu, A., & Ussler, W. (2006). SCIMPI: A New Seafloor Observatory System. In OCEANS 2006 (pp. 1–6). IEEE.