Much of the ocean remains a mystery, waiting to be explored. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Much of the world’s ocean remains a mystery. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
It is cold and dark. Creatures here have adapted to live and thrive in this environment, but not us. Once you pass the threshold of the aptly-named twilight zone, around 650 feet, there isn’t enough light to fuel photosynthesis. For every 33 feet of depth gained, the pressure increases by 14.5 pounds per square inch or psi; at a certain point, most organisms with gas-filled spaces, like our human lungs, would be crushed. As you continue to travel farther down, the weight of all the water above and around you presses in, making it impossible to pass a certain point without specialized technology. Most humans will never experience these mysterious depths firsthand. With the aid of submersibles, only three people have ever ventured to the deepest point in the ocean, the Mariana Trench, seven miles below the surface. The challenges of reaching this hadalpelagic zone make it one of the least studied locations on Earth.
I’ve talked to experts, visited their labs and research centers, and watched them at work–often under challenging circumstances. I’ve been to sea and shared the joys of science and discovery alongside bouts of seasickness, equipment malfunctions, and precious time away from loved ones. Few things I’ve experienced in 46 years on this planet compare to going someplace no human has ever gone before, to seeing this other world that exists right here at home.
Until we get out there and start poking around, we have no idea what we might find, but, according to NOAA, “More than eighty percent of our ocean is unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored.
I’m a writer and an educator. I’m also lucky to be able to say this: I am an ocean explorer.
Having spent the last two summers at sea, observing a wildlife survey in National Marine Sanctuaries on the NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada and supporting robotic exploration of the deep sea aboard Robert Ballard’s Exploration Vessel (E/V) Nautilus, this is what I’ve learned: the Earth’s ocean is vast with many secrets waiting to be discovered.
Just a few months ago, in October, while exploring off the coast of California near Monterey, the E/V Nautilus team was moving their robotic explorer or ROV (which stands for remotely operated vehicle) down the flank of a seamount and out of nowhere they happened upon a brooding site with thousands of octopuses in shimmering water that indicated hydrothermal activity of some sort. No one has ever seen anything on this scale before. This real-life octopus garden is just one example of the discoveries waiting for us in our ocean.
To get a sense of scale of the discoveries still possible, consider the 2010 Census for Marine life. It took a decade to complete and was conducted by 2,700 scientists from over 80 countries, on 540 scientific expeditions, at a cost of $650 million dollars, U.S. They identified over 6,000 potential new species and published more than 2,600 research papers. The project shed light on a variety of ocean science research–from a white shark cafe in the open ocean to enormous microbial mats, “ranked among Earth’s largest masses of life.”
The census represents a monumental bit of discovery. Yet scientists, like Chris German from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI), think we’ve only scratched the surface. While off the coast of Hawaii last summer, German pointed to the Pacific Ocean, noting that it covers half of the planet and is “woefully unexplored.” He’s been studying hydrothermal vent systems just along the mid-ocean ridge for 30 years. The mid-ocean ridge is a ribbon-like mountain range that runs through the entire global ocean; it is about ten miles wide and 37 thousand miles long.
German estimates that the oceanic community has made discoveries at a rate of one new species every two weeks during his 30-year career. Even exploring as fast as they can go, they’ve only been able to explore about 20 percent of the mid-ocean ridge in three decades. He and his colleagues see opportunities to expand our capabilities here on Earth with emerging technologies in development for future space missions. Essentially, our drive to reach outer space and other ocean worlds will unearth much in unexplored regions of our ocean.
The oceanic and space communities have a great deal to offer each other–from technology development to protocols and training for remote work in extreme environments. In fact, scientists like Julie Huber believe it is time for the oceanic community to be more like NASA. Huber is an expert in marine chemistry and geochemistry at WHOI. Her work examines microbial communities in the deep ocean and, in the not-so-distant future, on other planets.
Huber argues: if NASA can land a scientific laboratory on Mars, then we should be able to do the same here on Earth. Sending scientific vessels to sea or space is no small feat. Ship time and space launches are costly and hard to come by. However, advances in marine robotics, such as Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s (MBARI) environmental sample processor (ESP) make it possible to do much more with less. When loaded onto an autonomous underwater vehicle, the ESP is a lab-in-a-can, collecting samples and processing them in situ for near real-time oceanographic monitoring. Huber advocates for developing new technologies, similar to MBARI’s ESP, that would allow for analysis of microbes in extreme environments like the deep ocean.
Huber is part of a program called NASA SUBSEA, which stands for Systematic Underwater Biogeochemical Science and Exploration Analog. The SUBSEA team members come from NASA, NOAA, the Ocean Exploration Trust, and several academic centers, including WHOI and Idaho State University.
In August and September, I served as the lead science communication fellow on board the E/V Nautilus during the NASA SUBSEA expedition to the Lōi`hi Seamount off the coast of Hawaii. The SUBSEA team is planning for future remote deep-space exploration of Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus as well as crewed missions to Mars and our own moon.
Robotic dives at Lōi`hi offered the opportunity to practice and develop protocols for future missions because today’s ocean explorers work remotely, using tools and methods that will serve space exploration. Someday, when we reach distant ocean worlds, we will deploy robots and explore from the safety of a command center here on Earth, a spaceship, or some other location like a base on the moon or an asteroid.
In order to prepare for those future missions, NASA and their partners gathered a science team at the Inner Space Center at University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography. This team remotely directed our operations on the E/V Nautilus while we were in Hawaii, serving as “mission control” for the expedition. Experiencing time-delays and technical difficulties will enable NASA and their partners to be better prepared for the challenges of deep space exploration.
Conditions at Lōi`hi, which is an active underwater volcano, are similar to what scientists believe exist on these other moons in our solar system.Lōi`hi was selected because the lower temperatures (about 390 degrees F) at these hydrothermal vent sites, called white smokers, are similar to temperatures detected by the Cassini spacecraft at Europa. Using ROVs, we collected rock and water samples so astrobiologists in Huber’s lab at WHOI and geologists from Idaho State could determine what sorts of rock and water interactions are taking place.
In places where sunlight doesn’t reach, there is no photosynthesis for food production. So, organisms like the microbes we observed and collected at Lōi`hi are make a living off of chemical reactions. Scientists are studying these reactions in order to model what could be happening on other planets.
Darlene Lim on board the E/V Nautilus in 2018. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
To Darlene Lim, NASA Geobiologist and principal investigator for the SUBSEA program, the impetus to explore is an insatiable curiosity about what might be waiting out there. Lim has spent the better part of her career running teams and research in extreme environments on Earth, using them as analogs for future exploration elsewhere in our solar system and beyond.
“We have a sample size of one,” said Lim. “We know that this planet is habitable; we know it is full of life, but what else is out there?”
She adds that we have, at our fingertips, the opportunity to go and in situ understand whether or not life is beyond this planet in our solar system. She smiles and becomes animated when she talks about exploration, making her enthusiasm highly contagious. It’s hard not to get excited about answering questions humans have been asking for all of our brief history on Earth. “What an exciting endeavor that I think we should to take the opportunity to stretch out and accomplish,” said Lim.
But what will it be like when we actually get to one of these remote, distant places in our solar system? Will we find life?
Europa Image Credit: NASA
Imagine you’re flying over an ocean world, not Earth but another. Maybe this is Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. It is cold and inhospitable. But, scientists know there is an iron core, a rocky mantle, and a salty ocean. How do they know this?
Take a look at the composite image below. There are plumes of water vapor at about 7 o’clock. To identify these plumes, scientists used Hubble’s imaging spectrograph, an instrument which acts like a prism revealing a sort of wavelength fingerprint of the object being observed; this fingerprint makes identification possible. Using this instrument, they were able to capture the silhouette of Europa as it passed in front of Jupiter and identify these plumes of water vapor, rising over 62 miles above the surface. These data aligned with previous observations from Cassini flyovers of Europa and they indicate the presence of an ocean and geologic activity worthy of exploration.
Image Credit: NASA/ESA/W. Sparks (STScI)/USGS Astrogeology Science Center
When we do get to Europa, there will be no humans on the mission. In the coming years, we are going to overcome incredible engineering obstacles in order to land robotic explorers on a distant icy moon, over 390 million miles from home.
According to German, experts think we can get there by 2033. Then, once we’ve landed on the surface of Europa, it will take another two years to drill ten to fifteen miles through the ice in order to eventually make our way to the ocean floor and transmit images home to Earth–images that these scientists hope will include hydrothermal vents and microbial mats.
Lim said it generally takes 18 to 24 months to be able to draw meaningful conclusions from the fieldwork that took place at Lōi`hi, but she says everything is on track. This means I can’t really tell you exactly what was learned last summer, just yet, but I can attempt to convey why the work is so cool. While we were still at sea, I asked Lim and German why would we should travel 390 million miles to find tiny microbes.
“Any time that humanity has extended itself in that way, along comes other developments. Think social developments–the way we think about ourselves, we organize ourselves, what we think is palatable in terms of the way we treat other people,” said Lim. “It kind of comes hand-in-hand with the ability to think about what is beyond us.”
To German, 390 million miles, when considered alongside the vastness of space, isn’t really that far to travel at all.
“Rather perversely, what’s really exciting about it is only having to go 390 million miles for what we can do is ridiculously close to home,” said German. “And that’s completely new thing in the last decade.”
He goes on to explain that when we thought of looking for life elsewhere in the universe, we traditionally thought about looking for planets with liquid water on the surface and the kind of life forms that we understand from photosynthesis, the dominant form of life on our own planet.
To German, the current generation of ocean exploration work has revolutionized our view of what it takes to make planet habitable. The discovery of seafloor hot springs and cold seeps like those found along the California Borderlands have offered what German describes as a “panoply of different kinds of habitable environments that are often independent of sunlight.”
He’s quick to point out that on our own planet, we know that single-celled life was the only thing in town for the first two to three billion years of our history. “If an alien had ever come searching for life on our planet, there’s a two-to-one chance that all they would have found was an ocean full of microbial life and a barren landscape,” said German.
German believes that we could find microbial life in one or more of about half a dozen candidates in our solar system, in places with an ocean with geologic activity like Europa. German adds with zeal, “It’s closer to home than human-made robots have already been. We don’t even have to go to the limits of human ambition!”
During the 2019 expedition season, the SUBSEA team will be returning to the E/V Nautilus and diving at the Gorda Ridge in late May and early June–you can follow along from home by watching the live-streamed dives. The ridge is another volcanically active area off the coast of Southern Oregon and Northern California with temperatures and conditions similar to Lōi`hi.
The team will do much of the same science–looking at how the rock and water interactions support microbial communities–but they will also introduce communication breaks to simulate planned and unplanned communication drop offs.
It will be wonderful to see what we learn from this work and subsequent projects. To me, what is truly exciting is that ocean exploration here on Earth will eventually give us the tools to visit other ocean worlds. In return, our drive to explore the universe will allow us to better understand our home planet – to locate majestic underwater mountains, identify new medicinal resources, and discover sea creatures that defy imagination. And, after spending time with scientists like Lim, German and the SUBSEA team, I see that the opportunity to extend ourselves beyond the boundaries of what we currently understand about science, technology, engineering, and even ourselves makes a more-than-compelling case for exploration.
Until we get out there and start poking around, who knows what we will find?
Plastic washes up on the beach in Manzanita, Oregon. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
Years ago, I sat on a beach in Maremma, Italy, sifting the sand through my fingers — marveling at the multitude of colors. It was ancient mountains reduced to sediment and ferried to the beach. It was terra cotta roof slates and brightly hued ceramic tiles from the Amalfi coast, transformed by salt, wind, and waves into freckles of color in the palm of my hand. I brought a small amount of sand home in a jar, but the magic was lost in transit. Today, I am not confronted with the remnants of beautiful medieval cities here on this western shore in Oregon. There is no lovely evocative name for what crunches beneath my feet: plastic. Carried by currents, it accumulates at the water’s edge.
Beyond the horizon exists a floating gyre, called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by some; others name it the Pacific Trash Vortex. It’s much larger than Texas and has cousins of similar size in the Atlantic and Indian oceans. They are composed mostly of plastic, which floats and flows with the currents, converging where they meet. Ultraviolet light and the ocean environment cause the substance to break down and infiltrate ocean creatures and habitats in ways we have yet to fully understand.
Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
The World Economic Forum says that by 2050, plastic in the ocean will outweigh fish.
I worry and wonder: where will we go when the ocean no longer offers a home and solace for even the smallest of living things? These thoughts propel me on my walk this spring morning, along my favorite beach in Oregon. Then, I spot something else.
ithThe Oregon Coast in the spring of 2016. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
From a distance, it looks as if the beach is covered in litter — like raucous partygoers retreated with the tide, leaving the cleanup for someone else. Intermingled with bits of brightly colored plastic, a closer inspection reveals that the curvy line extending for as far as I can see is a mass stranding of tiny little organisms called Velella velella.
Like the Portuguese man-of-war, but smaller, these hydroids live in large colonies out in the open ocean, drifting en masse along the surface of the water, much like those amorphous plastic gyres, but living. Protected by a deep blue pigment that acts as natural sunscreen, the critters flood the U.S. Coast Guard office with false hazard reports during those spring months when folks mistake the floating, giant blue blob heading toward the beach for an oil spill.
Velella velella or by-the-wind sailors. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
They are also called by-the-wind sailors – nicknamed for the tiny sail-like fin on top of the flat disc that forms the organism’s body. One oceanographer says that the angle of the sail is determined by where the velella grows in relation to land, so that it can tack away from shores. Out in the open water, wind gently propels the critters along the ocean’s surface, but spring and early summer winds, especially during El Niño years, blanket coastlines with millions of these wayward sailors.
Velella are always floating, for lack of a more accurate expression, face down with short, sticky tentacles that enable them to catch and feed on other pelagic organisms. When there is no food readily available, the sailors use photosynthesis to grow algae, which their jellyfish-like offspring consume.
I can’t help but think about perspective and what it might be like to have the ocean below you as your world-view – like an astronaut floating in lower Earth orbit looking down on this ever-changing terrain. It might be all right if one weren’t at the mercy of such powerful forces like wind, ocean storms, and the sort of human carelessness that chokes our ocean ecosystems with plastic.
This essay was originally published in IEEE Earthzine; it has been updated and revised.
Jenny Woodman is a writer and educator who would rather be at the Oregon Coast than just about anywhere else. Follow her on Twitter @JennyWoodman
The Exploration Vessel (E/V) Nautilus is a 211 foot former East German "fishing boat" fully outfitted for scientific exploration. Image Credit: OET/Nautilus Live
The Exploration Vessel (E/V) Nautilus is a 211 foot former East German “fishing boat” fully outfitted for scientific exploration. Image Credit: OET/Nautilus Live
I stood on the sidewalk swaying on solid ground, a phenomenon dubbed “dock rock” or “land sickness” by those who’ve spent time on boats. I looked over my shoulder at the big blue and white ship from which I had just disembarked with my usual grace and style. High tide made the gangway incredibly steep; I lost my footing and slid all the way down with my gear to the chorus of onlookers gasping.
After being at sea, a combination of exhaustion, adrenaline, and homesickness fueled a multitude of feelings. With a lump in my throat, I thought I might never get the chance to do something so unbelievably cool again. I had just spent two weeks with truly amazing people exploring the ocean floor – with robots.
Last summer, I served as a science communication fellow on board the Oceanographer Bob Ballard’s Exploration Vessel (E/V) Nautilus.
Our expedition took place in Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary. The 1,296 square mile sanctuary had nearly doubled in size since receiving its designation as a protected place in 1989. Prior to the expedition, the scientists responsible for managing the sanctuary lacked the resources to fully explore and understand what lived on the ocean floor, miles below the surface. We traveled along the Continental Shelf, exploring underwater canyons and steep cliff faces, collecting video footage and samples that were sent to hundreds of researchers around the country.
These observations were aided by two remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), or robots, named Hercules and Argus. The ROVs work in tandem, tethered to the ship and each other. Argus absorbs the ship’s movements and shines bright lights down on Hercules as it performs delicate maneuvers and operations below. Hercules is outfitted with multiple high definition cameras, a Kraft Predator arm, and a host of sampling tools that aid the Nautilus team in their mission to explore the biology, geology and archeology of wild and unexplored places in the ocean.
Whenever the robots are deployed the video is live streamed all over the world, allowing students, scientists, and fans to explore with the team. This technology takes humans to locations too costly, distant, and dangerous for in-person observations like active underwater volcanoes and hydrothermal vents.
Using the Nautilus’s technology and expertise in Cordell Bank, NOAA scientists were able to identify new deep sea habitats teaming with life. There were jellies, sharks, skates, and over 40 species of rockfish, swimming among deep sea corals and sponge communities – it was a remarkable experience from beginning to end. And, it turns out that last summer was not the last time I’d set foot on the Nautilus.
From August 20 to September 13, I’ll rejoin Ballard’s Corps of Exploration as lead science communication fellow for a joint mission with NASA, NOAA, and various academic centers. The expedition is part of a multi-year SUBSEA (Systematic Underwater Biogeochemical Science and Exploration Analog) Research Program.
We’ll be exploring the Lō’ihi Seamount – an active underwater volcano off the coast of Hawaii. The hydrothermal venting and geologic features found at Lō`ihi (sounds like low-ee-hee) are thought to be similar to what scientists expect to find on other, distant, ocean worlds. We will be testing equipment and protocols as well as collecting samples and video to learn more about this geologically active and unique environment.
NASA is watching how the oceanographic community works in unusual environments in order to develop protocols for space exploration. When astronauts eventually make it to distant planets, it is unlikely that they will be able to land their spacecraft and walk on the surface right away. Using robotic technologies similar to what is used in ocean science, those astronauts will conduct their observations from the relative safety of their spacecraft – just like many ocean explorers here on Earth.
In order to allow a very large team of scientists and collaborators to participate from land, most of our dives will run from midnight to 4 p.m., Hawaiian time (HST). You can follow these dives online at www.nautiluslive.org and updates will be posted regularly on the Nautilus’s Twitter feed.
I’ll be standing watch from midnight to 4 a.m. and noon to 4 p.m. – moderating the questions coming in from the audience and helping translate the complexities of this work whenever the robots are deployed.
Last summer, I had no idea what to expect as I nervously put on my headset and sat down at my station for my first watch shift. Over the subsequent hours and days, I learned about the science and biology of the deep ocean and the technology and teamwork that took us to this otherworldly place. I saw my first octopuses in the wild, graneledone boreopacifica, who brood their eggs for 4 years, and I learned that skate egg pouches are called mermaid’s purses. As I prepare to head back out, the work is more familiar, but I’m just as eager to see new and exciting wonders.
I hope you’ll come along and explore this blue planet with us!
Jenny Woodman, Proteus founder and executive director, is a science writer and educator living in the Pacific Northwest. Follow her on Twitter @JennyWoodman.
A parent brings Arctic cod to their hungry chick waiting at the nest. Image Credit: George Divoky
Hatching is finally over with one very late egg hatching today after having been incubated for 34 days; 28 days is normal. The oldest nestling is 16 days old; the chick is gaining weight and doing well like all of the other 45 nestlings.
While the main pack ice is well offshore, the Marginal Ice Zone, where ice covers from 18 to 80 percent of the ocean’s surface, extends south to the entire Alaskan Beaufort Sea coast, including Cooper Island. The seascape visible from the north beach now has widely scattered floes, some with rather high vertical relief breaking the horizon, in a nearly flat calm sea. This differs greatly from what was present last year when the first week in August had no ice visible with large swells breaking on north beach. More importantly, last year at this time the sea surface temperature was well above 4 degrees Celsius while this year it is less than 2 degrees Celsius. The guillemot’s preferred prey, Arctic Cod, are typically found in waters from -2 to 4 degrees.
A Multisensor Analyzed Sea Ice Extent (MAISE) image shows why George is seeing ice off of Cooper Island. Image Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)
The ice and water temperature conditions are ideal for the parent birds provisioning. Arctic Cod has comprised well over 90 percent of the prey being fed to chicks this year. The two oldest chicks, hatched on July 21, weighed 35 grams at hatching and now weigh 275 grams and 245 grams – the larger of the two experiencing an almost seven-fold weight increase in a 15-day period. A growth rate that rapid requires readily available prey that is both abundant and high energy, as well as two dedicated parents to return to the nest site with a fish every hour. Similar high growth rates are occurring at other nests.
This condition of the nestlings could not be more of a contrast with early August last year. Then, there was widespread mortality of younger siblings as parents could only find enough prey to maintain a single nestling. Arctic cod were absent for much of the nestling period with sculpin and juvenile sand lance comprising most of the prey. Guillemot parents turn to these alternative prey only when Arctic Cod are not available. Sculpin, with their large bony and spiny heads, are hard for nestlings to hold and swallow. They are frequently rejected with numbers building up in nest sites as the young wait for a more preferable fish.
Blob sculpin, bony fish guillemot chicks struggle to consume, lay uneaten in a nest case. Image credit: George Divoky
For the moment our daily nest weighing and measuring of guillemot nestlings has been a very positive experience. However, based on what we have seen in the last decade, we know that conditions can change rapidly in August. A strong south wind could move the ice well out of the guillemots’ foraging range or warmer waters could move eastward from the Chukchi and drive away Arctic Cod. We also know that larger and older nestlings are more able to survive changes in prey availability and that the current high growth rates will allow more individuals to survive to fledging.
This post was updated on August 11.
This field report is part of an ongoing series titled Arctic Change centered around George Divoky’s 44th field season studying Black Guillemots, sea ice, and climate change on a remote Arctic island off the coast of Alaska. To donate and support Divoky’s work on Cooper Island, visit the Friends of Cooper Island website.
George Divoky's 2018 arrival on Cooper Island for his 44th field season. Image Credit: Craig George
George Divoky’s 2018 arrival on Cooper Island for his 44th field season. Image Credit: Craig George
June 19, 2018, after several weather-related delays, Search and Rescue pilots transported George and his gear to Cooper Island. His cabin is packed floor to ceiling with supplies stored over the winter, and he arrived with 800 pounds of equipment to support his 44th season studying Arctic seabirds.
While the Arctic has experienced back-to-back record-breaking years of warming, Utqiaġvik and North Slope of Alaska encountered unusually cold weather and snowfall this spring. According to George, he hasn’t seen conditions like this since the 1970s.
The most recent image of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) Barrow Observatory show snow accumulation in the middle of June 2018. Image Credit: NOAA ESRL
He predicts the late snowmelt will make this season particularly difficult for his Black Guillemots, who are already struggling to adapt to an ecosystem imperiled by climate change.
The delayed breeding season means the parents will have to fly farther to reach retreating sea ice in order find food that is ideal for guillemot chicks.
The longer distance means the parents expend more energy, which is a precious commodity for seabirds. In Far from Land, Michael Brooke writes, “Natural selection will favour individuals which do not imperil their own long-term chances of survival by recklessly over-investing in any single year’s offspring.” Brooke adds that it is better to forgo a single year’s offspring in the hopes of future generations of potential chicks, because seabirds like albatross and guillemots tend to lay small clutches of eggs. The Cooper Island birds typically lay two eggs each year.
Based on previous year’s data collected via geolocators George uses to track the birds, he thinks they’ve been in Nuvuk for the last month. Also known as Point Barrow, this headland is about nine miles east of Utqiaġvik. The guillemots are waiting for the snow to melt, George says.
“Snowmelt at NOAA’s Barrow Observatory typically occurs about a week before egg laying,” George noted on social media. “Female guillemots don’t ovulate until snowmelt allows access to the nest cavity.”
George waves goodbye from Cooper Island on June 19. Image Credit: Craig George
Once George sets up camp — which is no small feat alone in freezing temperatures — he’ll be sending us regular updates via satellite, which we will be sharing here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest news and Arctic insights.
This story is part of an ongoing series titled Arctic Change centered around George Divoky’s 44th field season studying Black Guillemots, sea ice, and climate change on a remote Arctic island off the coast of Alaska. To donate and support Divoky’s work on Cooper Island, visit the Friends of Cooper Island.
Experts believe climate change is a science communication emergency. Mounting evidence suggests that action now may be our only hope. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
A traditional view of science literacy focuses on information and facts — on textbook knowledge, but critical science literacy emphasizes awareness of how science is practiced, from the collaborative nature of research and how science is funded to the ways we evaluate what we know to be true at any given moment.
A science literate public is less concerned with scientific concepts rotely-memorized; rather, they are armed with enough understanding to think critically about the world around them and to participate in a democratic society. They are skeptical of sensational science headlines and carefully consider the sources of the information they consume. And, most importantly, they possess agency and autonomy, which strengthens our commitment to provide tools for decision-making without manipulation or covert persuasion.
Informed citizens make better decisions.
However, an ever-changing media landscape creates significant barriers between the public and the scientific understanding necessary to inspire meaningful action on climate change.
While climate change makes headlines daily, there are fewer (and fewer) journalists assigned to science and environmental beats. This combined with the deluge of data and information widely available on the internet makes critical science literacy fundamental in an age where science and technology pervade almost all aspects of our lives.
Evidence of sea level rise, hypoxic zones, and ocean acidification are just a few of the indicators that suggest the ocean is inextricably linked with climate change. Factoring in other human-caused stressors like plastic and pollution adds an even greater sense of urgency to the task of communicating about how oceanic changes impact our future and the future of many other species.
Experts believe climate change is a science communication emergency. Mounting evidence suggests that action now may be our only hope.
The ocean poses additional challenges for engagement. Over 70 percent of Earth’s surface is covered by water, but most of the ocean is out of sight and out of mind for the students, activists, and change-makers who might help mitigate threats to our vital ocean ecosystems.
Because of this disconnect between awareness and the scope of threats to our oceans, vast expanses of our planet remain unexplored and unknown. In the deep, cold waters, there are mountains that would tower over the Himalayas and bioluminescent sea creatures who use tools. There are species that coordinate with other species to hunt and survive in the harshest of environments. Currently, at least half of the anticancer drugs on the market come from marine resources, so ancient sea sponges and cold-water corals we’re discovering now may unlock medical breakthroughs the likes of which we can only imagine.
How do you build literacy and engage with something so distant, with a place that seems out of our reach? We’re working to build emotional investment in ocean issues with multimedia storytelling and informal science education.
Science is a human endeavor and we are storytellers constantly searching for the connective tissue to make an audience keep reading, keep looking, and — most importantly — keep thinking.
Jenny Woodman, Proteus founder and executive director, is a science writer and educator living in the Pacific Northwest; she is a 2018 lead science communication fellow for the Exploration Vessel Nautilus. Follow her on Twitter @JennyWoodman.
Life on a blue planet. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
USNS Comfort, a 1000 bed hospital ship, on the way to provide disaster relief in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, 2005. Image Credit: Henry J. Holcomb
Left to right: Borman, Holcomb, Anders, and Lovell on the deck of the USS Yorktown. Image Credit: AP Photo/Bob Schultz.
The Exploration Vessel (E/V) Nautilus is a 211 foot former East German “fishing boat” fully outfitted for scientific exploration. Image Credit: OET/Nautilus Live
Woodman leaving San Francisco Bay on the E/V Nautilus in 2017. Image Credit: Jenny Woodman
As a kid, I sprawled out on the shag carpet in our family room reading Nancy Drew mysteries and watching Star Trek. My childish imaginings were punctuated by the steady rhythmic sound of an electric typewriter clicking and humming in the nearby study where my dad wrote at home. He is a newspaper man. Over the span of his 45 year career he covered everything from the local school board meetings to state capitals, from the Apollo 8 splashdown to the revitalization of the Naval shipyards in Philadelphia.
I spent my childhood loitering in bustling and grungy news rooms, coloring in the weekday comic strips and waiting for dad to finish this or that important thing. By the late 80s, he was on the foreign desk at the Philadelphia Inquirer where I “helped” edit a story about a young Mikhail Gorbachev leaping up a flight of stairs two at time — the blinking cursor of the Atex computer screen is forever burned in my memory.
Watching him finagle time in the locomotive car of freight trains, on Chinook and Black Hawk helicopters, on US Navy aircraft carriers and on a thousand-bed hospital ship taught meaningful lessons about writing, although I didn’t realize it at the time.
Storytelling takes shape when you get out there: see the drama of boring everyday life unfold in front of you; smell the smoke and diesel fuel; get dirty.
I suppose it’s not surprising that I’ve spent the last few years cornering NOAA administrators and scientists at conventions and meetings, handing out my business card and asking for passage on any ship that would take me. I researched and applied for fellowships and writing residencies.
Finally, my efforts paid off. In 2017, I joined Oceanographer Robert Ballard’s Corps of Exploration on Board the Exploration Vessel (E/V) Nautilus as a science communication fellow. We spent two weeks exploring deep underwater canyons and the edge of the continental shelf in Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary with the Nautilus’s beloved robotic duo, Argus and Hercules.
The sanctuary lies off the coast of California, northwest of San Francisco. The sanctuary territory was expanded in 2015 to 1286 square miles of largely unknown deep sea habitats. During over 90 hours of diving with the robots, we found deep sea sponge and coral communities, along with a host of life — octopuses, skates, and catsharks — clinging to and lingering about the rocky substrate at the bottom of the ocean. It was a breathtaking spectacle to witness scientists and sanctuary managers discover new species and gain a deeper understanding of this precious natural area. Their excitement was joyful and contagious.
This summer, I’m heading back to out to sea. Through the Proteus platform, we’ll experiment with a combination of essays, live field reports, graphics, photos, and whatever we can get our hands on to help transport you, our readers, to remote and wonderful places in our own ocean world.
In July, I’ll return to California on the NOAA Ship Bell M. Shimada for a seabird and marine mammal survey. The cruise is part of a collaboration between three National Marine Sanctuaries (Cordell Bank, Greater Farallones, and Monterey Bay) and Point Blue Conservation Science via the Applied California Current Ecosystem Studies (ACCESS) cruises. It will be the 15th year of data collection and observation, helping provide a baseline for understanding sanctuary waters and the impacts of humans and climate change on these regions.
In September, I rejoin the team on board the E/V Nautilus as a lead science communication fellow. This expedition is a joint mission with NASA to explore underwater volcanoes with robots at the Lōihi Seamount. By watching how ocean explorers work remotely from the safety of their vessels in dangerous and unfamiliar environments, NASA can be better prepared for future space missions.
We’ll also be covering George Divoky’s 44th field season in the Arctic where he studies a small colony of Black Guillemots. These seabirds spend most of the year out on the ice; they come to Cooper Island every summer to breed. While George set out to study guillemots in 1975, he also ended up conducting one of the longest running studies of sea ice and climate change along the way. This Plumb Line special series is titled Arctic Change.
With this, our first season at sea and all our future projects we’ll work together to build critical science literacy and to engage the public with the ocean–our planet’s life support system.
I can’t help but think about perspective and what it might be like to have the ocean below you as your world-view – like an astronaut floating in lower Earth orbit looking down on this ever-changing terrain. It might be all right if one weren’t at the mercy of such powerful forces like wind, ocean storms, and the sort of human carelessness that chokes our ocean ecosystems with plastic.
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