We come from the island of Limuw,
which is now called Santa Cruz Island.
As a coastal Chumash person,
everything in my culture includes the ocean
[singing]
The ocean brings us everything we need.
The ocean brings us life.
It was a unique experience to have the Chumash guests
with us on this trip, because the waters that we're mapping right now
are very important to their people,
very important to their heritage.
We were incredibly lucky to have a Chumash
representative on board for one, it really helps bridge
the gap between what we would consider, say, Western science
and more Indigenous knowledge. [On the Explorer,
now, 15 minutes to AUV deployment.
That is 15 minutes to AUV deployment.]
We have two of the autonomous underwater vehicles from the University
of Southern Mississippi with us on this expedition.
[Bridge, dive boss, you got me?
Yes, I got you loud and clear.]
These are
very challenging environments for these two vehicles, which we're
sending down to nearly 2,000 meters in depth to operate by themselves
and map.
We have Eagle Ray, which is a torpedo-
shaped vehicle that specializes in acoustic mapping of the seafloor.
And we have Mola Mola, which is a hovering-style vehicle,
and it's equipped with a new imaging system with laser-derived bathymetry.
We're able to get down to 25 to 50 meters above the seafloor
and actually get really high-resolution, high-fidelity data.
Once we download the data is where all the excitement happens,
where we get to see our first glimpse of this new environment.
What this allows us to do
is really start taking these data points and piecing them together. Over time,
more and more data points
give us a more holistic understanding of what our oceans are,
how they influence us on land, and how it impacts us on a day to day life.
Humans have a long
legacy of exploration, and being able to just find
those dark corners and illuminate them with some kind of light and understanding,
I think not only gives us the potential for better understanding our environment
around us, but also protecting it
More than an exploring spirit
is the relationship to the land,
relationship to the water.
It leads you places.
[singing]
It means waves come in, the waves go out.
The ocean was doing that before I was born.
The ocean will continue to do that.
When I'm gone, we can't live without the ocean.
But without us,
she will go on.