I'm really excited that NOAA's bringing the ship back into the
Pacific. The Pacific is huge. Launching D2. Even though we
spent three years going all around the Pacific, that still
means that we just scratched the surface.
It's like you have to wash your car and all we did is we washed
one headlight so far. That's it! We gotta get to the rest of
the car. We've gotta get some more.
What brought us to the Pacific originally, back in 2015, was a
foundation of information that was missing. And we were working
under a campaign called CAPSTONE. CAPSTONE stands for
the Campaign to address Pacific Monument Science, Technology, and
Ocean NEeds. We were asked to come into the area in order to
help expand the exploration footprint. Many people when
they hear the term monument, think of things like Mount
Rushmore. But there are also monuments in the ocean that are
called marine monuments, and these are areas that are
particularly important to try to preserve. We had no idea
what animals were living at these depths in these different
parts of the Pacific.
There were so many firsts for all of us and with the amazing
cameras that the Okeanos Explorer has on D2, you
can zoom in and see things that we've never seen before, just
some amazing animals. Oh
Yeah. You can see it's starting to regrow! Yeah. The most
memorable things for me, there's this little bitty type of
jellyfish that when we first saw it, it looked like it had
been captured by a coral polyp. As it turns out, this tiny
little jellyfish lands on the coral and starts eating the
polyp. It's not the other way around. Which is "what?!" It was
really extraordinary. For us, when we're able to be there
with the remotely operated vehicles and in situ just
passively observe them, it's a really great opportunity for us
to learn a little bit more about what their day-to-day
life looks like. How do they interact with the environment
around them? How do they interact with the other animals
around them? I love that we get the opportunity to do that 'cuz
frequently, we find out that there are things beyond what we
expected down there which is really exciting. Pilot drive aft and
center line. Copy, driving aft and center line. Every dive,
every time that we're mapping an area, we're gaining new
knowledge. The maps are helping us understand what the seafloor
looks like as we try to build a global map of the seafloor
And then we can start building the picture of what
the ecosystem looks like. A lot of the ecosystems are driven
and controlled by the geologic factors. So, you have to
understand what the geology looks like in order to place in
context those ecosystems that you're looking for. 70% of our
planet is water. Specifically, most of it is deep sea. And yet
we know almost next to nothing about what's going on in the deep
sea. The way I sort of like to put it, is if you don't know
anything about the deep sea, you don't know a whole lot
about the planet that you're living on. The deep sea is very
likely playing an absolutely crucial role to the planet's
health. But we don't know that because we haven't been down
there enough. And then now in particular the protection that
the deep sea has always had are disappearing because our
technology is developing to the point where commercial
exploitation is becoming possible. So, it's a race but
in this particular case, we have a chance to understand
what the impacts might be on these deep-sea environments
before exploitation actually begins. And that's one of the
reasons why I think it's so important to learn what's down
there and understand what's going on.