What's the purpose of this investigation? Well we're
interested in developing new techniques to study the very,
very deep ocean, and we're perfectly situated here in Puerto
Rico to make this study, because it's the deepest part of the
Atlantic Ocean is only 100 miles north of the island of Puerto
Rico, and so we want to make studies in the island in the
trench of Puerto Rico, and also develop new techniques to use all
over the world in the very deep ocean. Is this the first time
that you're going to make this kind of research? Well actually
this is an ongoing work that I've been conducting since 2006, but
we have just now received the funds to move forward and fully
develop, and fully realize the project. I have a collaborator in
the Department of Electrical Engineering, Dr. Manuel Jimenez,
and he and I have assembled a team of students. We have one PhD
student, two master students, and currently three undergraduate
students that are assisting us. So now we have a team, and we're
able to move forward into the next phase of this project to
really ramp it up, and realize the goal of making studies in the
Puerto Rico trench. An important part of this project is the new
technologies that you're going to develop to go into the deep
ocean? Exactly, exactly. In the past, we have had to have very,
very large ships, and very large budgets to study the deep ocean,
because we would always attach a cable to the instruments that we
would use, and Dr. Jimenez, and I are developing techniques where
we don't need a cable. We put the devices into the water
completely, unattached to the boat, and they fall to the bottom
on their own, and they come back on their own. So this makes it
possible to work from small vessels, which allow us to have
much smaller budgets, and make more frequent samplings than
would be possible with a large ship, and a large budget. For
that you receive money from a federal agency, and I know it's
competitive. Tell me a little bit more about it. Well this was from
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and
they have a special office that deals with this type of work
that's called the Office of Exploration and Research. They
have approximately every two years they open a call for
proposals in which investigators from all over the world submit
proposals to conduct research in various parts of the world, and
Dr. Jimenez, and I submitted a proposal to do this work in the
Puerto Rico trench. Now what are your expectations concerning the
prototype? Well we feel very strongly that it's a solid
design, and we're now looking to augment it in a few ways. In the
past, we've used simply timing to determine the different stages of
the deployment, and now we're working with essentially a
navigation suite that has an accelerometer, gyroscope, and a
magnetometer to allow the instruments to determine itself
when it's falling through the water column, when it's on
bottom, when it's surfacing, and when it's on the surface again,
and that allows us to minimize our power consumption. For
instance, when we want to turn on the signaling light we want to
wait until we're at the surface to turn on the signaling light.
Well if we have this navigation suite we can let the instrument
determine itself when to turn on the signaling light rather than
use time. How deep is the Puerto Rico trench, and what is the
important to study? The Puerto Rico trench is approximately
8,500 meters, or 8.5 kilometers, and so then roughly approaching 6
miles in depth, and the pressures are extreme in these types of
waters, 12,000 pounds per square inch. There's absolutely no
light, so it's completely dark, and it's very, very cold, and yet
there's organisms that thrive at these depths, and biologist are
very interested in sampling these organisms to help understand how
they can develop and thrive at such extreme temperature,
pressure, and lack of light. They're also a new branch of the
pharmaceutical industry that specializes in natural products,
and many of the natural products in recent times have been
developed from organisms in the very, very deep ocean, perhaps,
because there's so poorly sampled, and because they
developed in these extreme conditions. So we definitely want
to make biological samples. We're also interested in making
geologic samples, because Puerto Rico trench is known to be an
area of high seismicity that is to say earthquakes and
potentially tsunamis. So with the entire Caribbean region, and the
eastern seaboard of the United States, any geologic information
we can gain from the Puerto Rico trench will help us plan for
potential tsunami threats in the future. Then we also were
interested in setting the physical oceanographic, the
characteristics of the Puerto Rico trench, and that's my
specialty is physical oceanography. Essentially that's
the study of the waves, tides, currents, temperature, solidity,
dissolved nutrients, and that sort of thing. What are the
characteristics of these prototypes that you think may go
to the deep ocean? Right, well in the past in order to provide
buoyancy, the lift to bring things up from the deep ocean,
we've depended on foam, things like Styrofoam, but in the very,
very deep ocean the foam is crushed by the high pressure. Now
we're using glass spheres for our buoyancy, and they're essentially
pervious to the pressure, and so we have the two glass spheres
that we use for our buoyancy, and they're hollow on the inside, so
we can put our instruments on the inside, and they're protected
from the pressure, and below that we have our instrument that
actually makes the measurements of the ocean, and it's
essentially the payload. Then below that we have the weight, or
the anchor that takes the whole device down to the bottom, and
the trick is to be able to release the anchor once you're on
the bottom so that everything can come back up. Professor, tell me
a little bit more about the role of the students in this
investigation. Well today we have depended very strongly on the
undergraduate engineering students of Dr. Jimenez, my
colleague, and they have helped us develop these prototypes that
we're using now, and now one of the students has decided to go
forward with his master's degree under the advice of Dr. Jimenez
and myself, and we've also recruited another master student
who is going to work on the project with us, and then we have
a team of three undergraduate students that are also going to
be participating, and then I have another mechanical engineering
student who is just completing his master's degree, who is going
to work with me for his PhD degree. So we have this great
team now, all more or less engineers, but going forward once
we actually start testing the prototype, and developing the
final version we'll be able to start recruiting students from
biology, chemistry, physics, geology, marine science for
undergraduate thesis, and for graduate work. Very mind opening
to the students from different perspectives. Right well
hopefully so, hopefully so, and we definitely have the potential
for many biology projects, any geology projects, many chemistry
projects, and many physics projects because of the newness
of the study, and just in the general inner disciplinary nature
of the marine science. We both know that we'll hear about that
more, so if the space is open to you for future interview once you
know more about the trench of Puerto Rico. Thank you for being
with us. Thank you Mariam.