Video courtesy of NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program

In crystal clear high definition video, NOAA’s Little Hercules remotely operated vehicle (ROV) flies over the remnants of a copper-sheathed sailing ship that disappeared at some point in the early to mid-19th century.

The video footage was captured on April 26, 2012 from the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer during the Gulf of Mexico Expedition 2012. The dive was conducted at site 15577 – a recently mapped but never-before seen shipwreck in the western Gulf of Mexico.  While most of the wood has since disintegrated, the oxidized copper sheathing remained along with a variety of artifacts. These included plates, glass bottles, guns, cannons, the ship’s stove, navigational instruments, and anchors.

A few days before discovering this wreck, the Okeanos Explorer filmed some incredible geologic features from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico including rivers and pools of brine, salt “volcanoes”, and natural seepage of oil from the sea floor.

Click here to view the embedded video.

These features contribute to a highly unique biodiversity that ultimately exist via a chemosynthesis-based food chain and the chemicals seeping from the earth.

The following is the dive report from the Okeanos Explorer:

During yesterday’s dive, we searched for natural hydrocarbon seeps — areas where oil and natural gas slowly leak out of the seafloor.  This is an entirely natural phenomenon and an important characteristic of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem. Just as oil and gas provide energy to power our modern society, these chemicals provide energy to support dense animal communities. Although seeps account for a much smaller area of the seafloor than the completely flat mud bottom that characterizes the majority of the Gulf, they are still quite common and contain an astounding density of life within a relatively small area. Because of the patchy distribution of hydrocarbon seepage, seep communities have been described as ‘oases’ of primary productivity in an otherwise food-poor deep sea. However, the degree to which seep communities represent isolated ‘islands’ having very little interaction with one another and the rest of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem is unknown. Thus, studying the interactions among animals within seep ecosystems, especially food web interactions, is important to the understanding of the function of seep ecosystems and how they fit into the broader Gulf of Mexico ecosystem.

A chimera fish and golden crab (Chaceon sp.) near a clump of seep mussels. These animals spend much of their lives wandering the barren mud bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, but occasionally visit seeps. They could be important agents in transferring energy from seeps to the greater Gulf of Mexico food web. Image courtesy of the NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program.

Vestimentiferan tubeworms and bathymodiolin mussels dominate biomass in seep communities. These animals have symbiotic bacteria living inside their bodies. Through chemosynthesis, the bacteria harness energy from the chemicals in seeping fluid to produce food for their host, much like plants harness the sun’s energy to produce food via photosynthesis. These animals, in turn, provide habitat for an entire community of smaller animals, including shrimp, squat lobsters, brittle stars, anemones, and polychaete worms. Interestingly, there is no evidence that any of these animals are actually eating the mussels or tubeworms. Instead, the associated animals get their energy from free-living bacteria that harness chemical energy in the same way as the symbiotic bacteria.

Recently, scientists collected whole aggregations of tubeworms and mussels, and their associated communities. This study showed that most of these smaller animals feed within a single mussel or tubeworm aggregation (as opposed to jumping tens to hundreds of meters from one to another).  This supports the ‘oasis’ or ‘island’ analogy — at least for those animals that spend most of their lives at seeps.  There are still some missing links that would help complete the picture of how energy is transferred from bacterial primary production through the seep food web and beyond.

One link is meiofauna – very small, sometimes microscopic animals such as nematodes and copepods (figure 1). These tiny creatures are likely to be an important link in the transfer of energy from chemosynthetic microbes to higher predators.  Another is the export of seep primary production to the surrounding deep-sea ecosystem.  It is not uncommon to see fish and larger benthic (bottom dwelling) crabs “visiting” (figure 2). These animals spend most of their lives away from seeps, but may feed on seep-associated animals before moving on. It is hard to measure how much energy leaves the seep ecosystem, because fish and large crabs are less common in these habitats than the resident animals and are difficult to capture. Additionally, seep nutrition may make up a very small amount of the diet of one individual fish, so that it is difficult to detect. However, many fish, each carrying away a small amount of seep material, could be quite significant in transferring energy from seeps into the greater Gulf of Mexico food web.

An image of the ocean floor in Google Earth before (left) and after a recent update to ocean data. The updated version corrects the grid-like markings once rumored to be evidence of the lost city of Atlantis. Credit: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Google Earth

The National Ocean Service, has a minor problem they wish to address.  While ‘navigating’ the ocean floor in Google Earth, countless amateur  oceanographers have emailed the service thinking they, by chance,  ‘discovered’ the lost city of Atlantis. Alas, while the strange grid-like patterns they found were in fact created by humans, the patterns were not the result of ancient developers of lost civilizations but, rather, are only made of data. In other words, there are no physical lines on the ocean floor. These lines are artifacts of the ocean floor mapping process.

Thanks to a recent update to ocean data in the Google Earth application, the computer data error has been fixed, the grid lines “erased” and, once again, the city of Atlantis is lost.

NOAA expects fewer inquiries regarding this mysterious, lost, underwater civilization…though we know some of you will still keep looking.

In the three years since Google earthexpanded its reach into the ocean the company has focused with enthusiasm on building great relationships with the world’s leading oceanographers, people like David Sandwell at Scripps/UCSD, Sylvia Earl and Walter Smith at NOAA, and many others have collaborated to bring greater depth and accuracy to Google Ocean. And today the efforts have paid off.

Today Google has announced a major update to Earth which, by incorporating ocean topography soundings from all over the globe, reveals the most accurate digital view of the seafloor to date. This new detail comes from spacecraft measurements of bumps and dips in the ocean surface as well as shipboard soundings from surveys carried out by over 40 countries. With this update to ocean terrain data in Google Earth, 15 percent of the seafloor is now available at 1 km resolution.

Google tells us that, in order to make this update possible, “partners at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD have curated 30 years of data from more than 8,000 ship cruises and 135 different institutions.” And to showcase the new technology they have released the following video which, in detail, showcases all of the new features of Google Ocean. Take a look:

Click here to view the embedded video.

A graphical representation of NEPTUNE Canada's subsea architecture, image courtesy NEPTUNE Canada

By Captain Patrick Donovan, R/V Thomas G. Thompson, University of Washington  

As mariners we encounter them all the time… a yellow buoy, a white ship, the daily routine of transmitting weather observations.  They are references to scientific research taking place in our world, a world habitually focused on trade, commerce, profit, and loss. Sometimes unnoticed, the commercialized aspect of life on the sea comes in contact with the academic pursuit of knowledge.

Often these references arrive in the form of a Notice to Mariners.  An update to a chart, a submerged mooring, plotted somewhere along our track line. A concern? Maybe.  But then you see the depth, 2600 meters. Your deeply laden vessel only draws 12m. No problem.

But what is this mooring, and why would someone put it there? What is so interesting at that depth that someone would travel out into the middle of nowhere, a place that in normal seagoing life is often part of a route but never a destination, and install a subsea mooring in 2600 meters of water?

The answer is almost infinite. Ocean waves, swell, temperature, sea life, chemical makeup of the water column, salinity, gravity, motion, oxygen, nitrates, sediment, etc. You name it, and there is an instrument for it, or at least one in development. The ocean environment is still so vastly unknown, there are new and unexplainable things happening on a daily basis. We know more about the moon than we know about our own ocean, and in turn have a shared responsibility to find out more.

Though it can be one of the most tranquil, docile, and beautiful environments, the ocean can in a matter of minutes turn into one of the harshest, most unforgiving places on earth. Our ability to understand and predict weather patterns on the surface has led to increased safety for mariners by 100 fold, but understanding the weather is only part of the problem.  We don’t have, and never will have the ability to control it. And thus lies the greatest challenge in attempting to study a particular region. Access.

The ROV ROPOS is lowered into the sea with scientific instruments in its detachable tool basket. Photo courtesy NEPTUNE Canada

The only available access to the ocean is by ship, and the types of vessels needed are few and far between. Oceanographic research vessels must be seagoing vessels capable of handling large parties of scientific personnel, and hosting a variety of equipment, including remotely operated vehicles (ROV’s) and manned submersibles. They are expensive to operate, and offer little profit for commercial operators.

Scientists spend years writing grants, fighting for ship time, mobilizing a small army’s worth of equipment to remote outcroppings of ports to meet an available ship, transit out to the site of interest, only to be thwarted by impersonal and unbiased nasty weather.

A group of researchers from the University of Victoria, British Columbia, have found a solution to this issue by building a remote underwater ocean observatory.

Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) consists of two-subsea cable networks- called Venus (inshore) and Neptune (offshore). Located off the coast of Vancouver Island, these networks entail groups of instruments linked together by fiber optic cables.  The network uses the power of the Internet to bring real time observations from underwater instruments right into the offices and classrooms of researchers around the world, regardless of the weather.

Some of the instrument types of instruments available to date include:

• Conductivity-temperature-depth
• Current meters
• Hydrophones, sonars, echosounders
• Acoustic Doppler current profilers
• Bottom pressure sensors
• Chemical and gas sensors for measuring carbon dioxide, oxygen, methane, nitrates, etc.
• Seismometers, gravimeters and accelerometers
• High-resolution still-frame and video cameras with lights
• Microbe and plankton samplers and microbial incubators
• Turbidity sensors, transmissometers, sediment traps
• Benthic flow simulation chamber

The network offers early warning for potential disasters, such as earthquakes and tsunami’s. The hope is that with these instruments in place, the data will be available in the future to understand and predict such phenomena.

An inquisitive robot- Wally inspecting invaders to his home on the sea floor in 2100 m of water. Copyright 2011 CSSF ROPOS.COM

There is even a remotely operated crawler with HD video, lights, and all different types of sensors, that can be driven around from a shore-side control station in Germany. This miniature bulldozer – named Wally due to its resemblance to the Disney Pixar’s Wall-E, resides on the end of a 30m tether, and provides researchers with mobile access to his realm “wally land”.

The primary installation of the fiber optic main line was done by commercial cable ships, working under contract similar to that of a phone company. The auxiliary lines, instruments, and nodes have been installed by oceanographic research vessels, using an ROV to map out and survey cable routes, install instruments, and lay cable.

The Canadian Scientific Research Facility’s ROV-named ROPOS has done the bulk of the installation and maintenance. ROPOS has the ability to latch on to instrument platforms and fly them down to the sea floor to be plugged in to the network. It also has the ability to lay cable using an innovative system called ROCLS, or Remote Operated Cable Laying System. ROCLS is essentially spool of wire in a specialized geared frame designed to attach to the bottom of the ROV. The ROV can fly along with the cable reel and pay it out as they go, laying the cable along a pre-determined path on the sea floor.

The instruments are designed to be plug and play.  They use wet-mate connectors (which look like children’s toys made by Nerf) that can be plugged in by an ROV, allowing the instrument to be easily removed for maintenance/updating, and/or moved to other areas of the network.

The ability to change out and add additional instrumentation is a significant component of these systems. This is what will allow the networks to grow and evolve as interests and focuses change. The scientific process can be very dynamic, in that the course of the research will often change as more is discovered and understood about a particular subject.

Now in its second year of operation, ONC has gone through its share of trials and tribulations. Cable and instrument failures have beleaguered the network. The system requires annual maintenance, thus requiring ship time. Ultimately though, they have been successful. There has been a great deal of interest in further developing instrumentation and data collection, and the hope is that over time the network will become more interactive.

In the United States, the National Science Foundation is in the process of installing a similar network of instrumentation through its Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The objective is to create an expansive network following the NEPTUNE concept, over time encompassing the oceans of the western hemisphere.  There are multiple research institutions taking place in the implementation of OOI, each taking charge of a critical piece of the infrastructure. The networks will be high power and bandwidth, streaming real time observations, data, and live HD video. They will provide long-term access to an environment where up until recently, only a glimpse has been available.

Like anything else, these networks will evolve over time, with lessons learned and changes brought about by technology and innovation. The concept is sound, and the results proven. The research community has come a long way from the bathyscaphe and the Aqualung, and even the submersible. These tools, while still significant part of the foundation of oceanography, are dwarfed by the shear enormity of potential for the future of cabled observatories.

For more information on this project please watch the following TEDx presentation:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Or visit:

• www.neptunecanada.ca/
• www.ropos.com
• www.oceanobservatories.org/

Today, June 21st, is World Hydrography Day, a day to recognize our ocean surveyors.  Check out this video from Mary Glackin, NOAA’s Deputy Under Secretary, as she explains how hydrography supports the U.S. economy, keeps mariners safe, and protects our coastal communities and ecosystems.

Alvin, the manned submersible perhaps most famous for such exploits as locating a lost H-bomb in the Mediterranean Sea in 1966, exploring the first known hydrothermal vent sites in the 1970s, and of course surveying the wreck of RMS Titanic in 1986, is to be withdrawn from service this week to undergo a two-phase, $40m renovation – the biggest retrofit of its 40+ year career.

“The deep-ocean and seafloor beyond 4,500 meters water depth is this planet’s last frontier. A critical asset in this exploration is a more capable human occupied vehicle,” said Dr. Susan Humphris, the principal investigator on the upgrade project and a geologist with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), which operates Alvin for the U.S. oceanographic community.  “Those capabilities will be achieved through a two-stage upgrade of the current Alvin that will ultimately allow the sub to stay down longer – up to 12 hours – and dive to 6,500 rather than 4,500 meters.”

Upgrades include:

During Stage 1, a new personnel sphere with improved ergonomics will be integrated into Alvin’s modified frame, and other improvements made to provide:

• Increased fields of view (with five viewports instead of three, and complete overlap with the pilot’s field of view)

• Improved illumination and imaging systems

• Improved data collection, logging, and interface capability

• Increased payload for Alvin’s basket for carrying samples and equipment.

As funding becomes available and as lithium ion battery technology matures, the changes necessary to increase the working time and extend the depth rating of the submarine will be completed.

Since it was put into service in 1964, Alvin has made more than 4,600 dives, playing a major role in important discoveries about the biological, chemical, and geological processes that shape our planet. Its personnel sphere was last upgraded in 1974, when a titanium sphere replaced Alvin’s steel sphere, extending its diving capacity and ultimately enabling firsthand observations of mid-ocean ridges.

The new 6,500 meter-depth-rated sphere is the biggest technical challenge of the Alvin upgrade project. It must be able to withstand immense pressure – about 650 times that felt on the surface of the Earth. The sphere, which is close to completion, has 3-inch thick titanium walls and tests have shown it is an almost perfect sphere.  Its interior volume has been increased by nearly 20 percent and has been redesigned – with input from more than 110 biologists, geologists, microbiologists, geochemists, and engineers – for greater scientific efficiency and a bit more comfort. Instead of crouching on the floor of the sphere, scientists will now have adjustable benches giving observers the option of sitting, kneeling, or lying flat.  And rather than just three viewports, the new sphere has five larger viewports, with overlapping fields of view enabling better observations, communication and coordination among those in the sub.

Alvin’s final dive before the re-fit was on December 14th in the Gulf of Mexico where it has been stationed since December 6th on an expedition searching for signs of oil and its impact on deepwater ecosystems.

Read more at WHOI.edu

In 2002, when my wife was working aboard the Robert G. Sproul at Scripps Institute Of Oceanography, we had the chance to tour FLIP and it is one of the most interesting vessels I’ve ever seen. The Scripps website tells us alittle about this amazing research platform:

FLIP stands for Floating Instrument Platform: it is actually a huge specialized buoy. One of its creators described it as looking like a 355-foot long ( 108 m) baseball bat. If that isn’t unusual enough, it really flips!

Popular Mechanics featured the FLIP in a recent edition of the magazine. Here are some highlights from the story:

Shaped like a giant baseball bat, the 700-ton FLIP, or Floating Instrument Platform, is a Navy barge operated by Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. Once towed to a site, the vessel flips to vertical. “It was built in 1962 to refine acoustic targeting for submarine rockets, but scientists quickly realized that it would be useful for all kinds of research,” says Bill Gaines, FLIP’s program director. “So 45 years later, FLIP still serves the oceanographic community.” And it is still one of a kind.

Stability

Tanks 5, 8 and 9, and parts of tanks 6 and 7, remain filled with air to keep FLIP buoyant. Like the Louisville Slugger that the vessel was modeled from, FLIP increases in diameter from bow to stern — a profile that contributes to its stability when vertical. “A design criterion for FLIP was that it move less than one-tenth of a passing wave’s height,” Gaines says.

There is more good information at Popular Mechanics site in the story titled:

Open Ocean Lab FLIP Vessel: How it Works

FLIPing Video

Click here to view the embedded video.

More Links:

• Official FLIP Site
• Ship Technology Article
• Interesting Photos of FLIP
• Descriptive Photo of the Ballasting Process

Wired Science brings us news of MBARI‘s Eye Of The Sky, the world’s first deepwater webcam:

The first deep-sea webcam was successfully installed on the floor of California’s Monterey Bay Wednesday. The Eye-in-the-Sea camera will allow marine to unobtrusively observe organisms in the deep ocean.

“That was an extremely rare experience, something that complex working the first time,” Widder, a MacArthur “genius award” grantee and founder of the Ocean Research and Conservation Association. “Murphy took the day off.”

The remote monitoring system will take video and various scientific readings 24 hours a day, sending them via the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s new undersea data network, the Monterey Accelerated Research System, aka MARS.

At a time when everywhere scientists look in the oceans, they see mounting problems, the Eye-in-the-Sea-MARS combo will provide scientists with much-needed data on how changes in shallower waters are changing the nature of the bottom of the sea.

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<Via Bitterend>

The most technologically advanced drillship in the world is not on lovaton in the gulf of mexico or in a Korean shipyard. Actually it’s not even built yet. Meet the Aurora Borealis, a dynamically positioned, drillship/icebreaker, arctic research vessel designed for the European Union. The official website tells us;

The Research Icebreaker AURORA BOREALIS will be the most advanced Polar Research Vessel in the world with a multi-functional role of drilling in deep ocean basins and supporting climate/environmental research for the next 40 years.

The new technological features will include azimuth propulsion systems, satellite navigation, ice-management support, deep-sea drilling under a closed sea-ice cover and the deployment and operation of Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV) and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) from one of the two moon-pools.

The unique feature of the vessel is the drilling rig, which will enable sampling of the ocean floor down to 5000 m water depth and with 1000 m penetration into the seafloor at the most inhospitable places on earth. The drilling capability will be deployed in both polar regions and AURORA BOREALIS will be the only vessel worldwide to undertake this type of scientific investigation.

Technical Details:

• Powerful icebreaker with ca. 55 MW (diesel-electric)
• Highest classification for icebreakers
• Twin hull
• Two moon pools 7 x 7 m each
• Dynamic Positioning System
• Deep-sea drilling under a closed sea-ice cover
• Drilling rig: max. 5,000 m water depth and 1,000 m core
• Riserless drilling technology
• Modularized mobile laboratory systems – mission specific laboratories
Length over all ca. 180 m | Beam ca. 40 m | Personnel (crew + scientists) 120 | Expedition duration 60 days.

For more information on the Aurora Borealis visit the official website HERE or download the presentation HERE. For the oceanography geeks a more detailed study can be found HERE.

UPDATE: The BBC has just run an excellent article on this vessel which can be found HERE.

Note: This article was originally posted in Jan 08