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For thousands of years, humans have gazed
out across the ocean and pondered what lay beyond the horizon. What
we recognize today is that what lies below the horizon is just as important
as what lies beyond it.
Vice Admiral Conrad C. Lautenbacher, Jr., USN (Ret.)
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For those
who live by the sea, dream by its shores, depend on its sustenance and probe
its mysteries, our oceans are magical, vital frontiers. But as NOAA conveys
daily on so many levels, the sea is in our backyard no matter where we live.
The human connection is intrinsic. All of our water comes from the sea and
without water there is no life. Yet we still know surprising little about
our oceans. Only about five percent of the sea has yet been explored.
| Safeguarding
Promises Yet To Be Discovered |
Vice Admiral (Ret.) Lautenbacher recently led "a hard working and very knowledgeable
NOAA delegation" at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in South
Africa, where he spoke about NOAA's vision of a cross-sector commitment
to ocean and coastal health.
We've
hardly scratched the surface of the dominant environment on planet Earth
- and most of this planet's life lives in the sea.
Craig McLean,
director, NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration
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Very
rare shark species, the spongehead catshark (Apristurus spongiceps),
alive in their natural habitat, were spotted by NOAA scientists
while exploring in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Just two
other sightings have been documented, both pulled up by trawl.
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Credit: Victoria Department of
Fish and Game
Yelloweye Rockfish (Sebastes ruberrimus) with several others associated
with red tree coral at 146 depth off Alaska's southeast coast.
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"Our
purpose is to discover," Craig McLean said. "And the best questions
have yet
to be asked. They're beyond our current scale of appreciation."
How
do life forms survive in the dark, frigid sea, below the sunlit, food-rich
surface layers of the Arctic?
We
already know about deposits of methane trapped in ice crystals, a potentially
valuable energy source. They're spread over huge areas of deep water and
we're only beginning to find them.
What
does the sea floor
really
look like? We need to find out, to map for safer navigation, strengthen
habitat and fisheries management, and investigate biologically and geologically
important undersea canyons, seamounts and deep sea communities.
Credit:
Dr. Ian MacDonald/Texas A&M University
Canadian and NOAA-funded scientists
were lowered on ice, 35-ft. from the bow of the CCGS Louis
St. Laurent, during 2002 Arctic Expedition for the Sea Ice
Ecological Group headed by Dr. Rolf Gradinger of the
University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Scientists
exploring the ice used ice cores and under-ice scuba
divers to search for life in, on and under the Arctic pack ice.
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By leading this country's ocean exploration with a broad lens, NOAA
has generated tremendous accomplishments in under a year
-- and in the spirit of early explorers
who set out not to test a hypothesis but to learn what they would find.
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When scientists on board H.M.S. Challenger
sailed
from Portsmouth, England in December 1872, they launched the world's
first known ocean survey and the start of modern oceanography. Their
journey was one of pure exploration. 
That
same pioneering spirit helped
motivate a U.S. panel of ocean scientists, exploration that has resulted
in NOAA-funded pathfinding ocean exploration.
With technological leaps undreamed
of in
1872, and education and partnership as cornerstones, NOAA's Office of
Ocean Exploration is now discovering little or unknown regions deep
in Earth's last frontier.
Discovery-based
science is charting a course that's already
mapped over 10,000 square nautical miles, documented biological diversity
in previously unexplored regions, and evaluated remote-sensing technology
for future broad-scale sea floor mapping while collecting hundreds of
different species in the process. For the first time, NOAA delivered
700 megabytes/day of real-time underwater sound files to scientists,
marine managers and students. And discovery of 14,000-year-old freshwater
mussel shells off Oregon's coast revealed ancient, submerged coastlines
and understanding of sea levels.
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Unidentified jellyfish collected during exploration of the continental
shelf break and slope from the eastern coast of Florida to North
Carolina, an area known as the South Atlantic Bight.
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Etroglyphs, or rock etchings, provide a window to past.
While locating landforms where humans once lived is difficult,
new sonar tools and powerful computers that arrange data into
pictures make it possible to “visit” even where it’s too deep
to dive.
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Credit:
Dr. Ian MacDonald/Texas A&M University
Russ Hopcroft, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks,
sips from one of many meltponds scattered around the ice
during last summer's first-of-its-kind exploration of the
Arctic Ocean. An international team of 50 scientists examined
the hidden world of life in these extreme conditions.
Curled
in front of the camera, this fish, probably a type of eelpoutup,
stands on
"lebensspuren," or animal tracks, burrows and other
signs of life.
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Mapping
the physical, biological, chemical and archaeological aspects
of the ocean.
| Explore
the sea with a mouse! A Geographic
Information
System can create a virtual ocean
inside of your computer. Just as a conductor blends
sounds of different instruments, a GIS user manages the many
tools of ocean exploration -- satellites, buoys, sonar, submersibles,
traps, trawls, underwater cameras and more -- to build a multilayered
reconstruction of geographic reality, providing much of the
map-making that used to be laboriously produced by hand on
paper. |
An
ancient sea level with altered shorelines.
Sea
level with current shorelines.
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Credit: Mary Scranton
After
a certain depth (around 800 m), eyes
of midwater fish and shrimp tend to get smaller as you go
deeper in the sea. This makes sense, as there is not enough
light at these depths to make vision useful. Why then do
those species living even deeper at the bottom of the ocean
have such big eyes? What are they seeing? It must be bioluminescence,
light made by animals or plants, as this is the only source
of light at these deep depths.
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Understanding
ocean
dynamics at
new
levels to describe the complex interactions of the living ocean.
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"Spectrogram,"
a diagram
showing the varying strengths
of an earthquake's acoustical energy
in the North Pacific Ocean.
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DeepWorker
submersible
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Developing
new sensors and systems to regain U.S. leadership in ocean technology.
The DeepWorker submersible gives one explorer at a time a
250-270 degree of vision of our underwater world, to a depth of
2,000 feet. Lights and sophisticated camera systems let it record
under the sea.
NOAA Ship Ronald H. Brown, flagship of the NOAA fleet,
is a state-of-the-art oceanographic and atmospheric research
platform, the only U.S. ship to carry Doppler radar. Sailing
from its home port in Charleston, South Carolina with an
array of highly advanced instruments and sensors, the ship
travels worldwide supporting scientific studies that build
understanding of our oceans and climate. Just as on other
NOAA ocean and coastal research vessels, the high-powered
NOAA-developed Scientific Computer System collects, processes,
displays and archives data from navigational and scientific
sensors on NOAA ships.
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Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institution designed ABE, the
Autonomous Benthic (bottom) Explorer, which can sample an
area about the size of a city block, then conserve power
by "going to sleep." Submersibles allow a firsthand look
at cold, black ocean depths and the sea floor, providing
the capacity to make detailed observations and collect samples
of previously unexplored ecosystems.
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Clelia
submersible sampled a 40-cm limestone "Hoagie" at Sandwich Reef
in Georgia
during last year's "Islands in the Stream" exploration. The rock
teemed with widely diverse life.
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Reaching Out
to
the public to communicate how and why unlocking the secrets of the
sea is well worth the commitment of time and resources and a vital
benefit to current and future generations.
Johnson-Sea-Link submersible gives scientists maximum visibility
in an
acrylic sphere. Students and teachers had the chance to view it
up close during a special Ocean Exploration Port Day in Charleston,
South Carolina. Paula Keener-Chavis, NOAA ocean exploration education
coordinator, also created a program in which 80 teachers learned
to tie lessons to exploration from the eastern coast of Florida
to North Carolina — an area known as the South Atlantic Bight.
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Watch
how fast a scamp grouper switches color…ascend a steep canyon
wall with Alvin submersible… swim with squid…fly
by 35-million-year-old seamounts…sample deep sea life on
Galapagos Rift.