ECORD Expedition 501: SCIMPI is fully deployed.

Drilling, coring, and logging were ahead of schedule, so when Max and Ian, SCIMPI Technicians, stepped off the OSV Gaspee onto the L/B Robert at around 18:00 on July 30, 2025, the SCIMPI system was already laid out on deck—with all modules and cables connected, and all floats attached and banded to the cable.

All that remained was to perform some electronic health checks by connecting a computer to the Command Module, and then move the entire system to the drill floor to hoist it overhead and lower it down the drill pipe into the borehole.

However, the health check revealed serious digital communications issues. Subsequent troubleshooting determined that one of the Measurement Modules had suffered board-level electronic component failures inside the pressure housing.

All components had been quality-control checked before shipping, and this type of failure was not anticipated. As a result, there were no spare discrete electronic components and no hot-air solder rework station on the L/B Robert to repair the module. This left the team with two options:

1. Retrieve and replace the failed PCB: A Transcend team member could retrieve a backup Measurement Supervisor PCB from Colchester, VT, and deliver it to Fall River, MA by around 2:00 a.m., where a “quick-boat” on call for the expedition could shuttle it to the L/B Robert shortly after daybreak. Max could then install it into the failed module.
   

2. Bypass the corrupted module: Max could bypass the faulty Measurement Module by wiring from one end-connector to the other, maintaining communication between the remaining modules and the datalogger. However, this would also disconnect the corrupted module’s battery pack—one of four in the system—reducing the system’s stored power by 25%.
   

Thanks to SCIMPI’s fully modular design, the team devised a hybrid solution.

We physically reconfigured both the affected Measurement Module and the Command Module—removing all but one empty chamber from the former, and adding a chamber containing a battery pack to the latter. Since the electronic failure may have left the damaged module continuously powered for several days, we used a spare battery pack that had not yet been placed under load.

While Max performed the reconfiguration work on the modules, Ian went down to the deck to supervise the movement of the SCIMPI string from the staging area to the drill floor—leaving a gap for the modified module so no time would be lost.

In total, troubleshooting and diagnosis added about two hours to the operation, while repair and recovery took place during time that needed to be spent anyway. The string was fully deployed into the borehole just a few minutes after midnight.

The modular design of the SCIMPI system enabled a graceful and efficient solution, and our team’s rapid, creative problem-solving brought it to fruition.

Learn more about ECORD Expedition 501: New England Shelf Hydrology.

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.