A research team wrote in Science last month about finding thousands of new RNA viruses, and five new taxonomic phyla, in water samples from around the globe. The California Current extends nearly 2,000 miles from Canada's Vancouver Island to the middle of the Baja Peninsula in Mexico. As this interest grows, divergent ideas about its current and future role in supporting human life are being expressed in scientific and public discourse. A new collaborative effort between MBARI and other research institutions is leveraging the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to accelerate efforts to study the ocean. The hidden scars left on the landscape during ice ages thousands to millions of years ago have now been imaged in spectacular detail. Long before NASAs Perseverance rover touched down on the Red Planet on Feb. 18, one of its highest-level mission goals was already established: to seek out signs of ancient life on the Martian surface. Contact Us Comb jelliesknown to scientists as ctenophores (pronounced "teen-oh-fours")mesmerize with their beauty, but these captivating creatures remain poorly studied due to their delicate nature. Solving big data problems. Inner Space Center | International hub for ocean science exploration Nearly 40 years after the discovery of the RMS Titanic shipwreck, newly released video is providing new details about the ship that sunk over a century ago. AI for Ocean Exploration: Is An AI Colony Possible In The Deep-Sea? Their comprehensive range of on-board systems and equipment permit continuous operation . Last fall, astrobiologist Kevin Hand and I were aboard the Norwegian icebreaker Kronprins Haakon for a month, crashing through the frozen ocean off the northeast coast of Greenland. But boy can they do a lot with it. At the bottom of the Mariana Trench, at a place called the Challenger Deep near Guam, 36,000 feet beneath the surface of the ocean, the pressures from the water above reach a crushing eight tons per square inchabout a thousand times the standard atmospheric pressure at sea level. Some play touch football, or bring hockey gear for the occasion. The two parties will work together to further our understanding of ocean bathymetry and contribute to the global effort to produce the definitive map of the ocean floor, complementing the goals of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. . Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. (Nasdaq:OMEX) is engaged in deep-ocean exploration using innovative methods and state of-the-art technology to provide access to critical resources worldwide. The ocean is the largest region of the planet and remains a source of newly discovered species. Beyond illuminating the oceanographic process I was studying the connection between plate tectonics, volcanic eruptions and deep-sea vents that one shaft of ocean opened my eyes to a larger truth: Humans are largely blind to this enormous and lively part of the world more than two-thirds of the Earth. Hudson Canyon is a vast underwater gorge and ecological hotspot with deep-sea corals thats being considered for national marine sanctuary status. November 19, 2021|Marine Technology News. March 30, 2021|Marine Technology News. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) released the following statement today on the inclusion of several major oceans provisions in the FY2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). But in certain places, the sea floor plummets to truly astonishing depths. Google, BMW, AB Volvo Group and Samsung SDI are the first global companies to sign up to a World Wildlife Fund (WWF) call for a moratorium on deepsea mining, likely shrinking the potential market for deepsea minerals harvested for our cars and smartphones. Thats how many cells foraminiferalittle sea creatures with striking shellshave. Case in point, these 12 bizarro sea animals, all of which will have you questioning reality. Noise pollution from proposed deep-sea mining could radiate through the ocean for hundreds of kilometres, scientists predict, creating a cylinder of sound from the surface to the sea bed. Discoverer will be a state-of-the-art ship that operates off the coasts of the U.S. and its territories around the nation to study and explore the oceans. Resembling an alien shopping bag with guts made of glowing Cheetos, a bizarre creature took center stage in new footage captured by a remotely operated vehicle deep in the Pacific Ocean. 9/2022 (R&P) 24 Feb, 2023. Life on Earth likely emerged in our planets oceans, which is why scientists hoping to find extraterrestrial life elsewhere are particularly interested in ocean worlds. June 28, 2022|NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NOAAs Office of Ocean Exploration Office of Ocean Exploration and Research and the ocean data and technology company Ocean Infinity have announced a new agreement to develop deepwater autonomous technologies that can gather ultra-high-resolution ocean information. A hotter ocean is a hungrier ocean -- at least as far as fish predators are concerned. February 4, 2022|The Natural History Museum. Scientists have long assumed that the reason was obvious: shallow ocean waters are warm and rich in resources, making them an ideal environment for new species to grow and flourish. Encourage them to explore, and honor the pioneers who have led the way. Thirty years ago, I had the privilege of seeing the deep ocean up close. The Ocean Alexander 28E is the builder's new flagship exploration yacht. Sometimes, sources for precious new medicines are collected and many more are almost certainly waiting to be discovered. Newport, R.I., has been chosen as the future homeport for a new NOAA oceanographic research vessel being built for the agency. Known as a siphonophore Apolemia, the string-like creature is huge, measuring well over 150 feet. Its actually an autonomous research vessel known as the Saildrone Surveyor and its being steered remotely from shore. In 1953, the company was founded by Alden J. Researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are conducting a search of the Pacific Ocean for whats been dubbed the largest graveyard of aircraft downed during the Second World War. The crew of the Exploration Vessel Nautilus shared a highlight reel video from a recent remote-operated vehicle dive at the Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific Ocean. Remains of an elaborate stone fish trap have been discovered on the seafloor off Southeast Alaska, and scientists say it proves Indigenous people occupied the region 1,000 years earlier than previously believed. Scientists from the Museums Victoria Research Institute returned from a 35-day expedition mapping the seafloor in Australia's remote Cocos (Keeling) Islands Marine Park last week. But today most explorers who are making fundamental discoveries are scientists. In observance of World Oceans Day, we are sharing this Parley article on six women pioneers of ocean exploration. 2022 December 7, 2022|U.S. These behemoths lived alongside squid-like ammonites encased in tightly-coiled shells and a slew of bizarre fish. ODECO (Ocean Drilling & Exploration Company) was an offshore drilling company. Even the very contours of this world are still unmapped: We probably know more about the surface of Mars than we know about the ocean floor. ", March 2, 2023|Trinidad and Tobago Newsday. They urgently need to be left behind, says Helen Scales. 2021 Expedition leaders hope to bring new findings to light on geology and marine biology. Using a technique called reflection seismology, a team of scientists has imaged enormous gouges carved by subglacial rivers, buried hundreds of meters below the floor of the North Sea. As the vehicle slowly moves through the depths of the Davidson Seamount off the coast of central California, a team of researchers observing everything remotely murmur in excitement as a giant corpse slowly comes into focus on the camera. Continental movement could ultimately have the opposite effect, killing the majority of deep ocean creatures. More than 80% of all goods we consume are transported via the ocean, the ocean absorbs around 30% of the carbon dioxide that we release into the atmosphere and 17% of our food comes from the ocean. Ocean explorers have found a natural volcanic structure deep underwater that has the appearance of a mythical man-made road. A scientific instrument that collapsed in the deep sea allowed scientists to make one of the most precise calculations yet for the abyss known as Challenger Deep. Giant squid are one of the worlds largest invertebrates and belong to an ancient group of mollusks called cephalopods, which also includes octopuses, cuttlefish and nautiluses. DOER Marine Whale skeletons stand guard around the coastline of Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands, a stark reminder of the damaging effects of military sonar. Scientists observed a boomerang earthquake along Atlantic Ocean fault line, providing clues about how they could cause devastation on land. The water is murky as lights from an unmanned submersible shine on the seafloor, more than 10,000 feet below the surface. Sharks are often called "living fossils," and for good reason: The first sharks appeared in the fossil record roughly 450 million years ago and have lived through all five mass extinctions, including the one that wiped out the nonavian dinosaurs. The Moon Controls the Release of Methane in Arctic Ocean Unexpected Finding With Big Implications, Depths of alien ocean probed with radar in Cassini study, The Autonomous Saildrone Surveyor Preps for Its Sea Voyage, New URI oceanography professor to manage $94 million ocean exploration institute, Scientists ping in the New Year with sonar project aiming to map entire ocean floor by 2030, Atlantic discovery: 12 new species 'hiding in the deep', The deep sea discoveries of 2020 are stunning, Keeping a Close Eye on the Oceanfrom Afar. Exploration is the key to ending . SEAFARER EXPLORATION CORP (SFRX) - Publicly traded as SFRX Now, a Canadian-German team has, for the first time, measured the amount of oxygen exiting the Labrador Sea basin, using data from a deep-ocean current. Exploration. To monitor the change, a global fleet of about 4,000 devices called Argo floats is collecting temperature data from the oceans upper 2,000 meters. The ocean is an unending source of wonder. Ocean scientists around the world are studying the "unique moment" of quiet created by the pandemic. They're still puzzling over three mysterious sightings. September 23, 2021|Penn State University. As of January 2021, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) has issued 30 exploration licences to 21 deep sea mining companies that are all currently focused on mineral exploration. Bill Chadwick has seen things you wouldnt believe. Hilary Close, an ocean sciences assistant professor at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, is using a unique strategy to understand how carbon is transferred through living things into the deep ocean. An alien-looking goo creature is growing on the floor of the Caribbean Sea and it bears more than a slight resemblance to the shapeless 1950s science fiction monster The Blob. Like the barreleye fish and its translucent head. Ships traversing its choppy breadth disappear without a trace. The Noble Odyssey Foundation is searching under the waves of Huron Bay, for evidence of these ancient people. Their creamy carbonate walls and columns appear ghostly blue in the light of a remotely operated vehicle sent to explore. As these anticyclonic eddies move throughout the open ocean, the study suggests that the predators are also moving with them, foraging on the high deep-ocean biomass contained within. During a recently completed 18-day expedition in the protected Ashmore Reef Marine Park (off of Australia), scientists aboard a Schmidt Ocean Institute exploration vessel dropped an underwater robot into deep, low-light depths. They were in a manned submersible piloted by Victor Vescovo, founder of the private ocean-exploration company Caladan Oceanic, and its chief scientist Alan Jamieson, a deep-sea researcher from the . A team of scientists, engineers, and ship's crew on the research vessel Neil Armstrong operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) recently collected a 38-foot-long cylindrical sediment sample from the deepest part of the Puerto Rico Trench, nearly 5 miles below the surface. Ocean Drilling & Exploration Company (ODECO) Accident Lawyer A recent Twitter thread demonstrated the perils of life in the field, as did the BBCs A Perfect Planet as it sent camera operators to some of the most inhospitable habitats on Earth. Dr. Widder is an MTS member, MacArthur Fellow, a deep-sea explorer, and conservationist who combines expertise in oceanographic research and technological innovation with a commitment to reversing the worldwide trend of marine ecosystem degradation. Push to mine ocean floor raises concerns over International Seabed The US Ocean Exploration Advisory Board will hold a virtual meeting next month to talk about its priorities under the new Biden administration. Our focus is on what lies beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarcticas massive wedge of floating ice that shelters the southern-most extension of the Southern Ocean. The items on this page capture big news in ocean exploration, not just at NOAA, but around the field. Over the years, researchers are finding more and more methane beneath the seafloor, yet very little ever leaves the oceans and gets into the atmosphere. Vast amounts of ancient Martian water may have been buried beneath its surface instead of escaping into space, scientists report in the journal Science. Its not just where we work but its where we see the future. Even so, the governing legal regime for UUVs remains uncharted while the international community is just now skimming the surface of regulatory waters, with a focus on autonomous surface ships. Research vessels provide a critical platform for exploring the ocean. The following article discusses some of these mysterious yet fascinating deep-sea creatures. Our article focuses on the offshore . Throughout history, the oceans have been an essential source of survival, transportation, commerce, growth, and motivation. Have you ever seen a giant larvacean, the tiny sea squirt that lives inside a giant mucus house? Earths biggest habitat is also the one that we know the least about. The International Seabed Authority (ISA) is scrambling to develop regulations for exploiting metals from the marine floor by July 2023. In fact, oceans are our planets largest life support system. Around the world, seafloor sediments harbor vast amounts of methane. Our portable AUVs support missions in water depths less than 300m and/or 90km from shore. Odyssey has discovered hundreds of shipwrecks across the globe. Carlie Wiener is used to early mornings. Ridge and the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and five contracts for exploration for cobalt-rich crusts in the Western Pacific Ocean and the South West Atlantic. SOI acquired a 10-year-old high specification offshore vessel recently, which will go under conversion at a shipyard in Spain and be ready for ocean exploration in 2022. That's the end goal of a new prototype device developed by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) a wireless, battery-free underwater camera that runs on sound waves. NOAA has gone without a permanent, Senate-confirmed leader for more than four years, the longest stretch in the agency's history. 22 Feb, 2023. In this article we will present the 15 largest drilling companies in the world. It's more than 7 miles wide and 2.5 miles deep at its largest point. An entire ocean of liquid magma, or maybe a hot heart of solid metal, may lurk in Ios underworld. Its Office of Ocean Exploration and Research was so pleased with one contractor, the office chief wrote a formal letter of commendation. But the scale of this vital chemistry is mostly a guess, and theres little sense of how it will change as temperatures rise. But as you dive deeper and deeper, the sunlight above you fades. It's cool enough to find a shipwreck. Ocean explorers have long tried to survey the contours of the seafloor, but today's charts still pale in comparison to those of distant planets. BUSAN, KOREA, Dec. 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- South Korea's ocean exploration company Geoview successfully completed the marine geophysical exploration for the floating offshore wind farm in Ulsan. Hundreds of feet below the ocean's surface, somewhere between the dark ocean floor and the bright blue shallows, lies the twilight zone. Robot boat completes three-week Atlantic mission, Contractor goes above and beyond for NOAA, Robots go their own way deep in the ocean, Rare Boomerang Earthquake Tracked by Scientists in the Ocean for the First Time, Deep-Sea Microbes Exert the Least Amount of Energy Possible to Survive. A deep-ocean exploration company is seeking to recover a lucrative haul of gold aboard the shipwreck of the SS Central America, nearly 160 years after it sank off the coast of South Carolina in a . To date, mining for sand, tin and diamonds has been generally limited to shallow coastal waters. That could change in the next two weeks, however. With assistance from roughly 300 scientists affiliated with the funding body the Alfred Wegener Institute, the mission recovered invaluable data regarding the Arctic environment, but reached a saddening conclusion: The Arctic is still melting. Like many deep-sea animals, giant isopods (genus Bathynomus) look like theyre ready to star in a B-horror movie. Researchers at the California Academy of Sciences described 146 new species to science in 2022. The wreckage of a German warship that was struck by a British torpedo in 1940 has been discovered off the coast or Norway. Ocean Exploration | Science Mission Directorate - NASA Marine scientists often feel like they're fumbling in the dark. Self-camouflage is just one of the tricks of Brenners bobtail squid, a newly found species that is also helping research into microbes in the human gut. Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences has been awarded $2 million by the National Science Foundation to lead an international effort to accelerate scientific understanding of the environmental impacts of emerging industries in the deep sea - one of the most mysterious, and potentially lucrative, areas of the ocean. They have no mouths, no stomachs and no anuses. Far from a recent invention, submarines have a long and interesting history. Risks Of Deep Sea Mining For Electric Car Minerals : NPR Experts from the University of Bristol and Swansea University have shed new light on the giant megalodon, which is historys largest marine predator. Discoverer will be a state-of-the-art ship that operates around the nation and the world to study and explore the ocean. December 23, 2021|Hellenic Shipping News. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently teamed up with a record-breaking explorer to survey and map unknown parts of the worlds deep oceans. In case youve missed any of the biggest saltwater happenings, the National Museum of Natural Historys Ocean Portal team has rounded up the biggest ocean stories of the year here. We bring together expert teams of engineers and geoscientists to design, integrate and operationalize complex sensor systems deployed from AUV, ROV, USV and surface vessels . Taking place in Lisbon, co-hosted by the Governments of Portugal and Kenya, the event spotlighted the progress made so far in achieving the Sustainable Development Goal for the Ocean, SDG14 highlighting ongoing challenges alongside the countless new solutions that are emerging to complement multistakeholder action. The Deep Ocean Education Project website makes learning about the deep-sea accessible to all. These chemicals interact with molecules that have been conserved throughout evolutionary history and are involved in human disease processes, for example, cell cycling, immune and inflammatory responses, and calcium and sodium regulation. he National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the only federal agency with a program dedicated to exploring the deep ocean, closing gaps in our basic understanding of U.S. deep waters and the seafloor, and delivering the ocean information needed to strengthen the economy, health, and security of our nation. Despite covering more than two thirds of Earths surface, the ocean remains notoriously unexplored. We work with governments around the world interested in identifying mineral resources in Exclusive Economic Zones, focusing on phosphorite (fertilizer) and polymetallic nodule (battery metals) projects. Bioprospecting in Practice: How a drug goes from the ocean to the clinic. * They can do general surveys of areas for surface minerals., like manganese nodules * Another related area is sub-surface mapping for oil and gas in. AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles announced an upcoming webinar with three of the top female explorers and scientists in the field of ocean exploration and conservation. Sullivan, 68, emerged from the submersible DSV Limiting Factor (LF) on Sunday, which performed a successful expedition at more than 35,000 feet below the oceans surface. Today, the Board of Trustees of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership announced the appointment of Dr. Alan Leonardi as president and CEO, effective May 24, 2021. Today, there are more ways to take photos of the underwater world than anyone could have imagined at the start of the millennia, thanks to ever-improving designs for aquatic cameras. Seabed 2030 hopes to map 100 percent of the ocean floor by 2030, which researchers say will be possible thanks to advances in technology and corralling already available data. It wasnt a spout from humpback whales that power through this scenic fjord, or a sea otter lazing on its back, munching a king crab. But things are trickier for sedentary marine creatures like snails, worms, and clams, according to a new study. MIT scientists have developed an acoustic system that acts like an underwater GPS, yet doesn't need batteries to operate. The key locations where the seafloor bottoms out in the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic and Southern oceans were mapped by the Five Deeps Expedition. An asset in the investigation of historic shipwrecks is contemporary documentation which may help in the identification of period wrecks. In the intervening decades we have discovered more about this mysterious and peculiar environment and its inhabitants. New research shows how some deep-sea fish, with their specialised, ultra-black skin, are able to avoid detection even in the presence of light. OCEAN EXPLORATION TRUST, INC. is a Connecticut Domestic Non-Profit Corporation filed on June 12, 2007. Northrop Grumman (398) Lanterns Global (18) Davidson Hospitality Group (16) CAES (14) NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (8) . Big vessels, carrying robust robotic explorers and sometimes submersibles piloted by humans, embark on deep sea expeditions each year. February 2, 2023|Smithsonian Magazine. He is the celebrated deep-sea explorer who discovered the Titanic, as well as the German battleship Bismarck and other historic sunken vessels around the world. An ocean expedition exploring more than a mile under the surface of the Atlantic captured a startlingly silly sight this week: a sponge that looked very much like SpongeBob SquarePants. Eddies have been overlooked for too long. July 13, 2021|Interesting Engineering. South Korea's ocean exploration company Geoview successfully completed the marine geophysical exploration for the floating offshore wind farm in Ulsan. Underwater Mining Companies - Wealth Daily One of the highlights of the prolific Cassini mission to the Saturnian system was the detection of methane and molecular hydrogen, among other trace gases, in a plume of Enceladus ocean material ejected into space (see here and here). Things only get harder as you move underwater, though a recent spike in recreational blackwater diving has allowed marine scientists to lay eyes on the living artwork that is some of the oceans residents larval forms. In some cases, a skewed distribution, like the log-normal probability distribution, provides a better fit. The sea mosses, molluscs and corals had eluded discovery because the sea floor is so unexplored, scientists say. They even learned that most male ghost sharks have a retractable sex organ on their foreheads that resembles a medieval mace. When these algae die, they trickle downalong with the excretions of microscopic creatures that feed on themas "marine snow" into deeper zones. The ocean, in this light, is like an alien world within our own. How do you inspire the worlds future female leaders in ocean conservation? Submarines are one of the most effective elements of the world's most powerful navies. The Falkor research vessel is gathering the first seafloor data of 2021 by sending sonar waves to ping off the ocean floor at midnight on December 31, the first stake in a global effort to map the bottom of the seas by 2030. The aptly named common fangtooth fish (Anoplogaster cornuta)sometimes referred to by its nickname "ogrefish"inhabits deep waters all around the world, occurring at depths between 650 and 6,500 feet, although the species has been observed as far down as 16,000 feet. The maps offer the strongest case yet that the planet once experienced sea-level rise consistent with an extended warm and wet climate, not the harsh, frozen landscape that exists today.