Mediterranean Underwater IoT SubSee Completes Phase 1 Deployment: 3,000 Sensor Nodes Deliver Real-Time Deep-Sea Data

The EU Horizon Europe-funded SubSee underwater IoT project announced on September 1 that it had completed Phase 1 deployment. Three thousand underwater sensor nodes are distributed across the western Mediterranean, forming a monitoring network covering 200,000 square kilometers through acoustic communication links and undersea fiber optic backbone.

Each SubSee node contains temperature, salinity, pressure, current velocity, and chemical composition sensors deployed at depths ranging from 50 to 2,800 meters. Nodes communicate through low-power acoustic modems, with data ultimately converging to four undersea fiber optic access stations connected to data centers in Barcelona and Naples.

SubSee project lead Professor Jordi Sorribas of the Spanish Institute of Marine Sciences said: "The Mediterranean is one of the world's most studied oceans, yet our ability to monitor deep-sea environments in real time remains very limited. SubSee lets us track deep-sea temperature changes, current movements, and chemical fluctuations with second-level precision for the first time."

The SubSee network has begun providing data services for Mediterranean marine ecology research, undersea earthquake monitoring, and shipping safety. Phase 2 plans to expand the network to the entire Mediterranean with 15,000 nodes by 2030.