Explore Booklet Online!
- Introduction
- Making Discoveries
- New discoveries are being made all the time.
- Spotlight: Ocean exploration and human health
- Ocean discoveries have answered critical questions about Earth's processes and history.
- Spotlight: Mapping the seafloor
- Spotlight: Vent organisms and DNA detection
- Ocean discoveries have answered critical questions about life on Earth.
- Spotlight: Discovery of "Lost City" reveals vents of a different kind
- Ocean exploration answers questions about humanity's past.
- Spotlight: Human history revealed through nautical archeology
- Enabling Discovery
- What Is Ocean Exploration?
- Exploration is the first step in scientific discovery.
- Being there is essential to a true understanding of the deep ocean.
- Unoccupied vehicles greatly enhance ocean exploration capabilities.
- Spotlight: Getting under the Arctic ice
- Support for research is insufficient to realize the scientific potential of deep diving vehicles.
- Deepening Discovery
- Ocean observatories enable exploration through the dimension of time.
- Observations from satellites reveal new insights into the ocean.
- Spotlight: Studying the same places in new ways using "metagenomics"
- Data management is vital to scientific discovery.
- Spotlight: Sea worms in methane hydrates
- To be of most use, exploration efforts must be coordinated and sustained.
- Conclusions
Introduction
Among all the planets
of the Solar System,
Earth stands out as a watery oasis.
The ocean is the largest biosphere on Earth, covering nearly threequarters
of our planet's surface and occupying a volume of 1.3 billion
cubic kilometers. Despite the major role of the ocean in making the Earth
habitable—through climate regulation, rainwater supply, petroleum and
natural gas resources, and a breathtaking diversity of species valued for their
beauty, seafood, and pharmaceutical potential—humankind has entered the 21st
century having explored only a small fraction of the ocean.
Some estimates suggest that as much as 95 percent of the world ocean and 99
percent of the ocean floor are still unexplored. The vast mid-water—the region
between the ocean's surface and the seafloor—may be the least explored, even though
it contains more living things than all of Earth's rainforests combined. Similarly, the ocean
floor and sediments encompass an extensive microbial biosphere that may rival that on the
continents, which is not yet understood and remains largely unexplored.
(Image from
Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institution)The impacts of human activities on the ocean drive a growing urgency for its exploration
before permanent and potentially harmful changes become widespread. Even events that occur
far inland, such as nutrient runoff from agriculture and pollutants and debris carried by
stormwater, have impacts. The ocean bears a double burden from the burning of fossil fuels and
associated climate change; not only is it warmer, but the additional carbon dioxide dissolves in
the ocean, making it more acidic.
Although mariners have traversed the ocean for centuries, exploring its inky depths is no easy
task. Recent technological advances now make possible scientific investigations only dreamed of
20 years ago. The development of state-of-the-art deep-sea vehicles and a host of other technologies
have opened doors for finding novel life forms, new sources of energy, pharmaceuticals,
and other products, and have promoted a better understanding of the origins of life, the workings
of this planet, and of humanity's past.
