September 10, 2007
By Felicia Mello
From global warming to energy security, some of the biggest challenges facing our species involve processes taking place in the oceans. So it might come as a surprise that even oceanographers say we know virtually nothing about the giant saltwater ecosystem that covers so much of the earth.
"We know less about the oceans than about other planets in our solar system," said Steve Bohlen, president of the Joint Oceanographic Institutions, a nonprofit research consortium. "But that three-quarters [of the planet] drives our weather, provides 15 percent of protein worldwide that people eat, and poses a variety of natural hazards."
Lack of funding, the oceans' impenetrability to light and radio waves, and their inhospitability to human life have historically made it difficult for scientists to monitor basic properties like temperature, currents, and salinity. While NASA has colonized space with stations and satellites, oceanographers have explored sporadically from boats, peering only briefly into the seas' murky depths before retreating to shore.
But over the next five years, scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will join researchers from around the world to design and build a global network of underwater laboratories, including one in the Atlantic Ocean off the south coast of Massachusetts, that capitalizes on advances in satellite, Internet, and sound wave technology. In an effort that scientists involved in the project liken to the race to put a man on the moon, the Ocean Observatories Initiative will for the first time give scientists a permanent virtual pres ence in the sea.
"The information revolution is coming to the oceans," said Robert Detrick, vice president of marine operations for Woods Hole.
The initiative is funded by the National Science Foundation and administered by the Joint Oceanographic Institutions. While its goals are as broad as those that gave rise to the space program, scientists hope the understanding they gain of how the ocean functions and interacts with humans and the atmosphere will lead to improvements in managing fisheries and responding to natural disasters. The ability to conduct ongoing measurements is also crucial for scientists trying to sort out whether changes in weather patterns are due to global warming or normal seasonal variation.
Woods Hole last month won a $97.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation to build the East Coast observatory, where tiny sensors, gliders, and torpedo-like robotic vehicles called REMUS will roam up and down in yo-yo-like loops, measuring water circulation, temperature, and other properties.
The lab will combine first-of-its-kind equipment - like docks where the REMUS can park to recharge and upload data - with new twists on existing gadgets, such as adding solar panels and wind generators to buoys so they can generate their own power.
It will span 3,600 square miles in an area known as the continental slope, where the ocean floor plunges from a relatively shallow depth of 330 feet to more than 3,000 feet. There, cold water rushing down from the north mingles with warmer waters influenced by the Gulf Stream, unleashing complex processes that affect everything from the formation of storms to the nutrients available for sea life.
While the study of these currents has global implications, it could also affect the local economy, by helping fishermen, say, predict how many haddock will be born on Georges Bank in a given year.
Researchers at the Oregon State University and Scripps Institution of Oceanography are building a similar observatory off the West Coast. A web of fiber-optic cables maintained by the University of Washington will span a tectonic plate on the ocean floor, gathering information about seismic shifts and the unique life forms that cluster near underwater volcanoes. Smaller outposts will track temperatures and currents near the Arctic and Antarctic circles, areas scientists say are key for their understanding of climate change but, with their 100-foot waves and frigid winters, difficult to study.
Linking it all together will be a computer system that will allow scientists to control their army of robots from shore, issuing new instructions in order to better track a hurricane or other unexpected events.
"You will be able to send a message out to some buoy off the coast of Chile from your desktop," said Detrick.
The public will also be able to view pictures and data gathered by the observatory from any computer with an Internet connection.
While much of the force behind the national initiative stems from concern about global warming, collapse of fisheries, blooms of dangerous algae that contaminate seafood, and advances in deep-sea oil drilling have also led to increased interest in the oceans, Bohlen said.
Data from the observatories could help scientists predict problems in the ocean, instead of just react to them, said Berrien Moore III, director of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space at the University of New Hampshire.
"All the extra carbon dioxide we are putting into the atmosphere, much of that ends up in the ocean and that begins to acidify the ocean, and we don't understand what are the effects of that," Moore said. "Secondly, we really don't understand harmful algal blooms, and yet this is a major disruption in the coastal ocean."
Some of the research is, of course, of interest to the military, which already uses similar underwater robots to troll for mines in the Middle East, according to Woods Hole scientists. Defense contractor Raytheon is consulting on the East Coast observatory, but project leaders insist that pure scientific curiosity drives their efforts.
The state's John Adams Innovation Institute has provided $10 million in matching funds for the East Coast observatory, which scientists say could allow them to begin testing some equipment by 2009. The federal grant must go through an approval process over the next year before Woods Hole can build the observatory, a process officials estimate will take until 2012 to complete.
Moore said the observatories initiative marks a new phase in oceanography, one in which researchers will increasingly engage with a public hungry for information on environmental issues.
Whether the challenge is climate change or declining fish stocks, "people want to know why is this happening, and what will happen in the future," Moore said. "I believe there is now a growing understanding that we need to make a commitment both to the oceans and to the atmosphere and terrestrial systems if we're going to be proper stewards of the planet."
