New technologies and approaches are emerging to vastly improve ocean observations. Cabled observatories are an example of a paradigm shift, providing a relative abundance of power and bandwidth for observations covering scales from cm to km and times from seconds to decades. Sensors traditionally only available in laboratories can now be adapted for in-situ observations. The potential for interdisciplinary collaboration is significant. To leverage this, an ocean observation Research Coordination Network (RCN:OceanObsNetwork) has been set up