Deep-sea Site Characterization for the Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment

The Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE) is an initiative to develop a new neutrino telescope to be deployed in the Northern Pacific Ocean, off the shore of British Columbia. This neutrino telescope will allow us to search for astrophysical neutrino sources and gain significant insights into the physics of the cosmos. A pathfinder mission was deployed in 2018 to study the optical properties of the future detector site. We were able to characterize undersea optical attenuation lengths as well as the backgrounds attributed to radioactive activity and bioluminescence. These results from the pathfinder mission will be presented along with their impact on the future P-ONE detector design.