To kick off WOD celebrations, we were super fortunate at Georgia Aquarium to get a short-notice visit from James Cameron’s Deepsea Challenger submersible this week, on it’s way to its new home at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.  If you remember, all of us at DeepSN wrote about the amazing achievements of Cameron’s team back in 2012 when they safely returned to the bottom of the Marianas Trench south of Guam for the first time since 1960 and only the second time ever (Piccard and Walsh being the first, in bathyscaphe Trieste). Read those posts here and here and here and here and here and here.   Several of the DC team were present at the festivities, as were some folks from WHOI including Dr. David Gallo and long time DSV Alvin pilot Anthony Tarantino.  It was awesome to have the sub there in the flesh, so to speak, and there was much rejoicing.

The first thing you notice about the sub is that it’s not as big as you might expect.  It’s sleek, uncluttered, and very very GREEN.  They’ve got a great rig for transporting it around and showing it off, including the training sphere (the real sphere is inside the faring at the right hand end of the image above, in between the blue post and the tyres you can see that protect the base.

The sphere itself is MINISCULE.  It’s hard for me to relate just how tiny it is, but here’s me holding my 18 month old daughter in front of it.  Just think, James Cameron is over 6 feet tall and had to be locked into that thing for over 7 hours, with 7 miles of water over his head.  It was not only an amazing engineering endeavour, but also an incredible human endurance feat.  While in the sphere, the only view out was between his knees and through the tiny port you can see in the door (about the size of a baseball)

One of the more interesting aspects of the subs design are the battery arrays, both in their type and arrangement.  Most subs use lead acid batteries, but to get the energy density and compactness they needed, the DC team used Lithium ion.  They’re arrayed in cells on the outside of the middle pod, separated by syntactic foam firewalls and are plumbed together with lots of tubing.  Tarantino told me that they had to it that way in case any one cell should melt or catch fire.  When I look at the arrays all I can think of is “wow, there’s a lot of little bits there that could break under that sort of pressure”; but obviously they designed it properly because it worked.

It was a great thrill to be able to examine the sub closely and to talk to those who were there on the day that the dive was made (although Cameron himself couldn’t be present).  There was an excited atmosphere among the staff and the guests alike as people peppered the DC team with questions about deepsea exploration.  I had an absolute ball and consider myself pretty lucky, since it stopped only in Dallas, Atlanta and DC on its way to Woods Hole.  In it’s new home, WHOI engineers will work alongside the DC team on technology transfer and training and then ultimately the sub should become part of the WHOI operations fleet.  That shouldn’t be too hard because the sub deploys with a standard deck crane and some cargo straps (!), and does’nt need fancy A-frames like many submersibles – another benefit of its lightweight design. With any luck the US deep submergence fleet will then double from 1 (Alvin) to 2!

Read more about the Deepsea Challenger and it’s mission here:

The post For World Oceans Day: the Deepsea Challenger first appeared on Deep Sea News.

When he made his historic solo dive into the Mariana Trench last month, James Cameron brought back images and descriptions of a “lunar like” marine landscape nearly devoid of life.-via National Geographic

Returning from humankind’s first solo dive to the deepest spot in the ocean, filmmaker James Cameron said he saw no obvious signs of life that might inspire creatures in his next “Avatar” movie but was awestruck by the “complete isolation.” –via Christian Science Monitor

The quotes above illustrate just two of the many mainstream media pieces that highlighted James Cameron’s comment of a lifeless landscape at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.  However, Cameron fell into a trap nearly 200 years old.

Edward Forbes is the whipping boy of deep-sea biology.  Forbes’s big mistake was concluding, in the mid-1800s, that marine life could not exist deeper than 550 meters, what he called the “azoic hypothesis.” Given the state of knowledge at the time, it seemed logical that no species could survive under the extremes of high pressure, lack of light, and cold temperatures characterizing the deepest ocean. Unsurprisingly, Forbes’s thinking spread quickly among the scientific community. The azoic hypothesis ultimately proved wrong or this blog would have a lot less fodder for writing and a different title.  How Forbes was wrong is the interesting part.

Forbes based is azoic hypothesis on sampling he did in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, an area that sees little phytoplankton production.  With less food at the ocean’s surface, less food will sink to the deep ocean floor resulting in little abyssal life.  Unsurprisingly, when Forbes pulled his trawled samples from the deep they were not brimming with a cornucopia of life.

Forbes also didn’t know that the low food arriving to the deep sea miniaturized animals.  In one of the earliest papers on the deep-sea fauna, Mosely (1880) noted, “Some animals appear to be dwarfed by deep-sea conditions.” Almost a century later, Hessler (1974) noted that “individuals of certain taxa are routinely so small that they are of meiofaunal size.” Thiel (1975) echoes these comments by noting the deep sea is a “small organism habitat.”

Consider that the entire collection of deep-sea gastropods from the western North Atlantic collected under the WHOI’s Benthic Sampling Program (44 samples, 20,561 individuals) would fit completely inside a single Busycon carica, a typical-sized New England knobbed whelk.  Forbes nets with their big mesh size allowed most animals to pass right through.  Today of course we use finer mesh sizes on nets or cores so we don’t miss the diversity of small life.

I cannot help but wonder if Cameron fell into the same trap that Forbes did so long ago, an underappreciation of the complexity and uniqueness of deep-sea life.

Was he waiting for charismatic megafauna that never arrived and potentially never existed at the deepest point in the ocean?

Bob McDondald in a recent Op-Ed  stated,

… there is no substitute for good science. Big budgets and lots of publicity gather public attention – a stunt such as a solo dive to the deepest part of the ocean will get an explorer into the history books, just as a free fall from the edge of space did.  But these are often one-off events. The whole point of the exercise was to get there. Science, on the other hand, is a systematic, step-by-step process that explores carefully, building on past successes and putting new discoveries into the broader context of the scientific community. A robot sub being hauled out of the water may not look as dramatic as the scene of a hatch opening and the triumphant explorer emerging to a cheering crowd, but what the science actually reveals is the most dramatic of all

Of course, I would be remiss not to mention another point glossed over and even blatantly misrepresented in the media.  Cameron’s dive, while worthy of praise on many fronts, is a not the first exploration of the deepest part of the ocean.  Scientists, especially Japanese researchers, have been sampling the bottom of the trench extensively for a few decades with robots and landers.

As McDonald points out, and the labor of many expeditions and scientists has demonstrated, the Marianas Trench is actually full of life.  Although contrary to what McDonald claims new research didn’t reveal this fact but only supports what we’ve known for a while.

Marianas Trench is teeming with microbial life.  In 1997, a species of the common bacteria Pseudomonas was discovered from 11,000 meters deep. In 1998, Japanese researchers using the remotely operated vehicle Kaiko found evidence of two barophilic, pressure loving as you would expect from trench critters, bacteria.  Both bacteria species were from completely different groups.  In 2006, Japanese researchers hit a biological gold mine of microbes.  Actinobacteria, non-extermophilic bacteria, three major groups of extremophilic bacteria, fungi…O my! And o’ how the reports of new microbial species just keep coming, and coming, and coming, and coming, and coming, and coming in.  Indeed, microbial activity is shockingly high…even for those of us expecting it.

Naysayers will surely point out how bacteria somehow don’t count as real life.  They live everywhere. These people have some size threshold for life to count. I give you naysayers protists!  Foraminifera, amoeboid protists vital for nutrient cycling in the oceans, also exist at the greatest depths of the Marianas Trench.  Perhaps some will need something even larger…a metazoan.

Multicellular life is also known from the Marianas Trench.  From even the earliest explorations the large crustacean, the amphipod Hirondellea gigas, was observed.  Scientists have even isolated bacteria from its body.  Indeed, larger organisms have been found at the bottom of several trenches (see photo below).  A specimen of sea anemone of the genus Galatheanthemum, a worm from the genus Macellicephaloides, an isopod crustacean of the genus Macrostylis, and a sea cucumber Myriotrochus bruuni are all known from the deepest trench on earth and reported back in the 1970’s by Torbin Wolff (of Haka fame).

Cameron stated after his dive the necessity of returning to the deepest point in the ocean, the Challenger Deep, once again to explore.  I could not agree more. Our understanding of this trench, like much of the deep, is rudimentary.  We only have a partial glimpse of the life that existing there. However, we do know that it is not a lifeless void.  A wealth of life exists at Marianas Trench. You just have to know how to loo for it.

The post Is Marianas Trench A Lifeless Void? first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Word on the street is that there are ~200 deep-sea biologists attending, and the one and only James Cameron will be delivering a plenary talk about his badass Deepsea Challenge submersible on Tuesday morning. Unfortunately I couldn’t attend this year, so I’ll be following along online whilst drowning my sorrows in Grey Goose martinis (and maybe inventing a twitter-based drinking game?).

Day 1 has already seen some über cool stuff, such as the new iDeep app being released for deep-sea taxonomy. What other exciting news will unfold??

The post Deep-sea researchers convene at #dsbs2012 this week in New Zealand first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Since James Cameron’s record-breaking dive on March 26^th the media and the marine blogosphere has been heady with the news of a new milestone in deep-sea exploration.  And certainly, it has all the makings of a great story. Billionaire filmmaker who has made big-budget movies about the Abyss builds sub and goes down himself amidst great personal danger and challenge!! Drama! Story! Adventure!

Much of Cameron’s “adventure” has been positively received and deservedly so, but

I think a lot of well-intentioned folks have given Mr. Cameron and this whole expedition a bit of a pass and so, I thought I would present a counterpoint and some skeptical questions to Cameron’s efforts and what they might mean for deep-sea science.

1. Conflict of Interest? 

       Probably the biggest issue that I think we should be looking at was/is that this expedition was funded primarily by private money, including the watch-maker Rolex and Cameron himself.

A lot of people are accustomed to reading about/watching deep-sea biology that is in some way shape or form, funded by public money and so we have a different set of expectations. The National Science Foundation, NOAA, NMFS, or what-have you. Many of these publicly funded agencies are funded by tax dollars and as such, are intended for everyone’s benefit. Publications should be accessible to anyone who wants them. Materials and data collected are ultimately mandated for open and public consumption owing to the fact that they are underwritten by public tax dollars. Now, its true, the expedition has “academic partnerships” with National Geographic and Scripps Institute of Oceanography, but how much balance is there between the profit vs. non-profit interests?

Which priorities does the mission obey?  Are specimens, video and other data collected by the sub going to be available to the greater scientific community?

My concern here is that private concerns really have no obligation to hand over data or artifcacts collected under their auspice.  And so far, we have seen very little video made available to the public.

Apparently, we have no other samples from the bottom other than a 50 milliliter “half core” of mud. And yes, that has apparently been taken for further study. Great! But ultimately, that’s still a clump full of mud.  What happens on subsequent dives (assuming that the hydraulics get fixed) when/if they end up finding further specimens-shells, rocks and/or minerals, more video or other data that might live up to the fantastic promise and potential of deep-sea research but isn’t available to the public because of “proprietary interests”???  Presumably Rolex and/or Cameron have first say? Does it go to a museum? Or to a personal collection? Does it get made into a TV show before a scientific paper?  Will science benefit from anything collected on his prior dives to the New Britain Trench? (or have we already gotten data?)

How much dive time will go towards scientific versus other priorities? Whether commercial or otherwise?  What implications are there for data collection?   Maybe the DeepSea Challenge has all of these-but I couldn’t find mention of them on their available resources.

I have never heard of or seen specimens or information from Cameron’s scientific dives find their way into published scientific papers. Will materials from this dive begin to find their way into formal scientific repositories? Time will tell.

2. Publicity-Good or Bad?  What has been the public impact?

Probably the most “hot button” part of this whole endeavor is the fact that a millionaire celebrity filmmaker is the primary force behind a significant scientific adventure. Its been suggested that this event is a great promotion for deep-sea science and exploration that could even lead to the reinvigoration of the US’ ailing manned submersible program and lead to a new age of exploration and marine research!

Well, so far, I haven’t seen this. No direct endorsements from Cameron, Rolex or even National Geographic to save NURP (other than Cameron’s statement that funding “stinks”).  I haven’t seen any shift in public opinion regarding the severe de-funding that will brutally affect the National Undersea Research Program. I’ve heard of no reconsideration by Congress or the leadership of NOAA of deep-sea research since the dive has taken place.

There’s clearly a LOT of media attention to see a big stunt like this underway, but what tangible actions have we seen by these adventurers to aid marine science?  Have we seen donations of money or resources to permit further research?  Donations to marine research?  To fund students, post-docs or better yet an endowment to hire an aspiring new marine biologist at university??

There is a word out there: INFOTAINMENT. The term describes entertainment with an educational base, it may or may not have real science behind it-but who cares? Its entertaining and probably interesting but not really scientific or not even really educational. Is that what this has become?  Something that has been “washed” with scientific legitimacy but is ultimately there only to rack up viewers for advertising and attention for the celebrity?

 3.  Cost?

I’m kind of surprised that this one hasn’t been brought up before.  I can think of no better example of the disparity between the rich 1% and the poor 99% than deep-sea science performed by government agencies versus the corporate funded Deepsea Challenger Expedition.

A short and simple look at compared costs gives us some idea of the estimated costs. According to the recent announcement for NURP cuts, their budget will be sunk by 4 to 5 million dollars.  This represents submersible operations from a 30+ year program, covering 2 subs, the ship, an undersea laboratory as well as personnel and so forth.

In contrast, the cost of the Deepsea Challenger expedition ITSELF seems likely to cost MORE than 5 million USD.  A similar submersible from this 2009 BBC article indicated that its cost was about 1.5 million dollars.  Consider further that the Deepsea Challenger has more bells and whistles (hi-def cameras etc.) plus modifications for diving to 10,000 m depths, plus ship time, fuel, engineers, ships crew, insurance, and other considerations, such as test deployments and so forth.  Its not unreasonable to say that the cost of this expedition alone was probably more than the cost of one year of NURP’s budget.

Criticism, especially anonymous criticism, is easy on the Internet. And I’m not particularly angry with anyone..least of all James Cameron. I DO want to see how his efforts will result in an expansion of our knowledge and I would love to see this dive become a catalyst for greater deep-sea research. But scientists are often exploited and underappreciated. And scientific resources are few and precious.

I think that if this expedition is to mean something MORE than a publicity stunt and if Cameron and the people involved are truly dedicated, than more can and should be done. Most scientists work their asses off trying to get a few years of funding.  Researchers try very hard to make sure that their time and energy are spent in a way that best serves those grants and scientific endeavor. Expeditions like this can be a fun diversion-but ultimately they have to be weighed against how much data/education/training/specimens/etc. came out of them.

People talk about this expedition as a great “milestone” as if no one had ever done any deep-sea exploration after the Trieste’s first hadal dive in 1960.  But remember that deep-sea research in the last 30 years has been fairly active with multiple and regular visits to depths >1000 m with less frequent but dependable visits to ~3000 m. Alvin gets to 3000 m (ed. note: Alvin is rated to 4500m, after its upgrade will be able to dive 6500m) and Pisces V can get to 2000 m and they’ve been doing it for decades. Alvin has been used as a vehicle for data collection of nearly 2000 papers (i.e. contributions to science and society).

There’s no denying that 10,000 m is deeper than we’ve ever gone but I don’t think we should allow ourselves to forget that there was a foundation for that “milestone” that shouldn’t be ignored.

To modify a statement from the economist Elizabeth Warren

There is nobody who got to the bottom of the ocean on their own-Nobody.

You built a submarine that got down there?  Good for you. But I want to be clear. You followed a route down there based on research and science the rest of us built up. Scientists and students who have given openly and freely of their time and money made this possible and give this dive scientific credibility.  You didn’t have to take a complete random, uneducated guess as to what would be down there because people went down there and saw a LOT of the deep-sea before you. This was work the rest of us did.

You built this sub, and funded this expedition into something terrific. God bless –keep all the glory.  But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

The post Shouldn’t We Be More Skeptical of the DeepChallenger Dive? first appeared on Deep Sea News.

On May 20th, 2010–one month to the day after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig (under lease by British Petroleum) exploded and caught fire in the Gulf of Mexico, beginning what would become the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry–the U.S. government and numerous environmental organizations accused BP of falling short in the information it had provided about the spill. While oil literally gushed from the Macondo blowout, information on what was happening beneath the water surface was not so free-flowing. Allegations were made that BP had engaged in a “cover-up” about the extent of the damage and the amount of crude flowing unchecked from its ruptured well at a water depth of approximately 5,000 feet (1,500 m).

U.S. Representative Edward Markey (D, Massachusetts) was one of the most vociferous critics in calling bullshit on the lack of information,

“BP has stonewalled on releasing the video [of the submerged blowout site] for 23 days. … If you look at the video you can see plumes of oil spilling into the Gulf far in excess of 5,000 barrels per day.”

It wasn’t simply questions and concerns about the rate and volume of oil gushing from the drill site that were being unanswered. Of equal import was the extent to which BP was employing dispersants at the Macondo well which carried their own environmental hazards.  But with the blowout nearly one mile below the ocean surface, and with readily available (and suitable) submersible technology primarily owned and operated by petroleum interests, the need for independent verification and monitoring of BP was simply not a reality.  BP effectively limited real time information which ultimately stalled independent assessments of the true severity of the disaster.  The U.S. government, international media, and the public operated in a data deficient environment manufactured by the petroleum industry.

But I think that James Cameron’s historic Deep Challenger submersible descent last Sunday into the Marianas Trench could signal a new era of independent deep sea surveillance and oversight.

I won’t rehash how important Cameron’s trip to maximum ocean depth was to the ocean science and exploration communities (DSN’s Captain Craig and Quartermaster of Ales Dr Dove made their compelling case earlier this week.)  There’s certainly a lot that we COULD learn from even a small sediment sample from Challenger Deep (as DSN Chief Purser of Purses Dr Bik explained so beautifully.) But a lot of the reasons why we DON’T know as much as we’d like to know is because the deep sea is such an inhospitable place for human exploration (again, see Dr Dove’s excellent examination of this issue.)

I’d like to take a somewhat different tack. I think that Cameron’s deep dive represents a turning point in our ability to (literally) shine some light upon  deep sea bad guys.

Set aside for the moment the very real and significant issue that Cameron’s achievement was only possible though nearly limitless personal funds and an abundance of design creativity leveled at the challenge.  His funding and army of engineers were critically important factors to his success, but it’s not the aspect of his achievement that I find most compelling.

What resonates for me is that Cameron was success. Full stop. By reaching Challenger Deep and returning in one piece, Cameron demonstrated that privately funded, rapid-response deep water human operated vehicle (HOV) surveillance is not only possible, but it’s potentially ready to be deployed again.  To me it represents a signal that businesses engaged in the practice of resource extraction in deep, remote, and potentially fragile ecosystems far removed from public scrutiny and oversight are now on notice for having their activities make the front page of the New York Times.

Think I’m delusional?  Perhaps so.  But we already have some precedent for the viability of such independent verification, albeit from miles above the ocean surface rather than miles below.   Consider the example of SkyTruth.

Founded as a non-profit organization in 2002 by geologist John Amos who was becoming increasingly concerned by the mounting evidence of human-caused changes to landscapes and ecosystems around the world, SkyTruth uses satellite and aerial imagery to study the landscape impacts of natural gas drilling on the Rocky Mountains, reveal commercial fishing vessels operating around marine protected areas, and has documented the growth of strip mining for coal and other minerals around the United States.  During the Deepwater Horizon spill, satellite imagery of the Gulf of Mexico generated by SkyTruth was able to monitor oil slicks within no-fly zones established over the Deep Horizon rig by the U.S. Navy.  Daily reports by BP and the U.S. government estimated the oil flow rate at the Deep Horizon spill at a maximum of approximately 5,000 barrels of oil per day.   Through their monitoring, SkyTruth published a revised estimate suggesting that the flow rate of oil had to be at least 5,000 barrels a day, and probably several times that.

SkyTruth successfully demonstrated that the use of scientifically credible satellite images and other visual technologies to create compelling pictures that vividly illustrate environmental impacts could provide compelling data to environmental advocates, the media, and the public. To quote SkyTruth’s mission statement, they, “envision a world where all people can see and understand the environmental consequences of human activity everywhere on the earth, and are motivated to take action to protect the environment.”

Which brings me back to James Cameron and his Deep Challenger achievement.  Deep Challenger and the private sector future it pioneers for deep sea exploration and research could very likely represent a deep sea mirror image for SkyTruth.  Let’s call it DeepTruth.

Imagine if Deep Challenger technology and the ability to “drop in” on the Gulf seafloor existed in the early days of the Deep Horizon spill.  Might real time documentation of BP’s activities at the Macondo well have resulted in more rapid mitigation response? Perhaps BP did everything within their ability to act on the spill.  But a media blackout on the part of BP and the U.S. government simply doesn’t jibe with that assumption.

That was then.  What about now?  What about other potential threats that are looming for deep sea ecosystems far from the public eye and awareness?  Readers may recall that we Deeplings have been attempting to call attention to the potential threats resulting from deep sea mining of massive sulfide deposits by Nautilus Minerals.  I’ve personally been following this issue since 2007, 2008, 2008, 2009, 2009, 2009, and yet again in 2009.  Blog Papa Dr McClain covered the issue in 2010, 2010, 2010, and 2011.

Nautilus Minerals is a leading underwater exploration company, and the first to explore the seafloor for high grade copper-gold-zinc-silver massive sulphide deposits (SMS).  The Canadian-based Company holds more than 365,000 square kilometers of tenement licenses and exploration applications in Papua New Guinea (PNG), Fiji, Tonga, the Solomon Islands and New Zealand.  Nautilus has been operating in PNG since 1997, when the first offshore mineral exploration licenses were granted and it launched the world’s largest commercial exploration program for high-grade SMS mining.  Nautilus has completed ongoing exploration surveys in PNG since 1997 in order to determine the potential for commercial-scale deep-sea mining operations.

Nautilus’s first major exploration site in PNG, the Solwara 1 SMS Prospect, is located in the Bismarck Sea, 50 kilometers north of Rabaul and approximately 670 kilometers east of Madang.  The Company also has a total of seven other named Solwara prospects throughout the Bismarck Sea, 33 total tenements, and 57 applications for exploration.   Once extraction operations begin in earnest, The Company estimates an average of two megatons of ore per year would be extracted by Nautilus in a singe strip mining operation.

Nautilus Minerals stated in their PR materials that, “We’ve put in place a number of measures to ensure that ecosystems and biodiversity are maintained.”  As Dr Craig McClain wrote back in 2010, he was skeptical of these assurances.  Specifically, he expressed concerns that:

1. Seafloor mining would create sediment plumes that would smother organisms relying on filter feeding.
2. Removal of hydrothermal vents, even extinct, could potential expose non-vent organisms to toxic levels of heavy metals.  These species, unlike those occurring at vents, are not adapted for this exposure.
3. Mining operations are not delicate processes and as such unintentional destruction of nearby habitats is likely.  In my experience with one ton plus, remote operated vehicles precisions movements are often not possible.
4. The economic incentive lies with continued and total removal of vent fields not with their protection.  Will mining companies exercise discretion.  Lessons from terrestrial mining indicate they will not.

Very little opportunity exists for PNG citizens to use current mining and environmental laws to oversee deep sea mining activities.  In fact, no precedent exists for compensating stakeholders for damage incurred by unproven and untested deep sea mining.  Ultimately, we have to trust that Nautilus Minerals will exercise a minimally damaging and invasive approach to their extractive operations more than a mile below the ocean surface.  That’s right, we have to trust a mining operation to be careful.  For all intents and purposes, deep sea mining of massive sulfide deposits on Earth may just as well be unobtanium mining on Pandora in Cameron’s film Avatar.  It’s that removed and alien an enterprise.

But what if a Deep Challenger-like HOV could pay a visit or two to a Nautilus Mineral tenement during extraction to independently document standard operating procedures?  Identify sediment plume damage from mining tailings as it happens?  Beam first person accounts and imagery back to the media?  Perhaps the precautionary principle might actually stand a chance if deep sea resource extraction enterprises no longer operated in the dark with near impunity.

I fully recognize that Cameron’s HOV achievement may not necessarily be best applied to deep water surveillance.  In fact, Andrew over on Southern Fried Science makes a very compelling case that while Cameron’s deep dive is a remarkable human achievement, anything humans can do in an HOV can be done cheaper, safer, and in a more permanent manner with a remotely operated vehicle (ROV).  And I agree with him to a point (with the notable exception that whether we are talking about deep sea or space exploration, there is an ineffable yet persuasive argument that a human presence inspires us in a way that a robot cannot).  And while I’ve tossed around terms like “deep sea bad guys,” I recognize that resource extraction enterprises (whether petroleum or precious minerals) are not necessarily villainous.  Avaricious and short-sighted?  Oh, you betcha.

Rapidly deployed, privately financed, human operated deep water vehicle surveillance and oversight as a deterrent to deep sea ecosystem damage may not be viable.  But again, Cameron’s demonstration that it’s POSSIBLE (and not just the purview of governments and corporations) may provide some deterrent value in and of itself.

The post James Cameron And The Dawn Of DeepTruth? first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Despite a faulty hydraulics hampering sample collections, the Deepsea Challenger managed to grab half a sediment core – a cupful of muddy, watery ooze from the deepest point in the ocean:

“Jim recovered about 50 millileters of muddy seawater that I gleefully processed for culturing and for genomic studies,” Doug Bartlett, chief scientist for the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE project, said in an email to National Geographic News.

“Can’t wait to see what new critters (Bacteria, Archaea, and fungi) that we discover,” said Bartlett, a marine biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California.

Some might lament Cameron’s technical difficulties and shake their heads at the lost sampling opportunity. But even half a sediment core will reveal precious information about one of the last frontiers on earth. We have plenty to work with.

In molecular terms, 50 milliliters is a LOT of sample. Normally my lab protocols call for 200 microliters of mud for a single extraction of environmental DNA. So with his one cup of mud, James Cameron can do 250 DNA extractions–and you only need one or two extractions (maybe a few more, which are then concentrated and pooled if there isn’t a lot of DNA because of few animals or small amounts of tissue) before you can move forward and produce gene sequences, using high-throughput platforms such as the Illumina Hi-Seq.

So even with a single drop of sample, you can obtain hundreds of millions of DNA sequences from species inhabiting the Challenger Deep. And there’s no restriction to any particular taxonomic group. The power of DNA means that we will be able to characterize deep sea life across all known domains–bacteria, archaea, eukaryotes, and even viruses.

One of the first things to sequence will be ribosomal RNA, a conserved gene that essentially serves as a molecular barcode (since every cell needs its ribosomes to survive!) and allows us to place species on branches within the Tree of Life. By comparing ribosomal genes from the Challenger Deep to those from species that have already been studied, we’ll be able to place this deep-sea community in an evolutionary context and investigate how life might have evolved in the ocean depths. What other environments contain closely related species? How divergent are the ribosomal genes in the Mariana Trench (and from this, we can start guessing how long these trench communities have been isolated–if at all–from other deep sea habitats)? Is the Challenger Deep harboring any novel, undiscovered branches on the Tree of Life?

We’ll also get an environmental metagenome from this sequencing effort — randomly sequenced pieces of DNA representing every species’ genome lurking in that muddy sample. This will give us an expanded view compared to ribosomal genes, and we can start inferring things about community function. What type of genes are prevalent in the deepest, darkest ocean trench? The types of genes we find can tell us a lot about how a community survives (does it rely on scarce food sinking from above, or have species adapted to use alternative metabolic pathways such as chemosynthesis), and how an assemblage of organisms might inherently depend on each other to survive in an extreme environment. If the community in the Challenger Deep is not too complex (a handful of species, or a good pool of abundant ones) and the scientists at Scripps decide to sequence a LOT of DNA from this precious mud (a couple runs on the Illumina Hi-Seq can get you close to a billion DNA sequences), then it is possible that we might be able to assemble whole genomes from this random sample of mud. So instead of a ribosomal gene we’ll potentially have an entire genome as a molecular barcode for some microbial species–and for inferring how evolution happened in the deep-sea, a genome will give you a lot more information than just a short ribosomal sequence.

In addition to extracting DNA we can also take out the RNA and look at patterns in molecules such as mRNA (expressed transcripts of genes, if you remember back to high school biology). So in addition to finding out who’s there and what their genomes say they can do, RNA can tell us what these species might actually be doing. Remember that there’s a lot of “junk” DNA sitting around in any given genome (and you’ll get a lot of this information from a random environmental metagenome sequencing), so its always good to have additional information about what type of genes are being expressed. Now the pressure and temperature changes will have sent most species’ cellular machinery into overdrive during Cameron’s ascent to the surface, and we may get more of a “help, help , I’m dying” reaction from the community. Its always tricky to interpret gene expression. But in many ways, any data is good data. Gene expression from the Challenger Deep may tell us some very exciting things.

Doug Bartlett from Scripps also indicated plans to try and culture some microorganisms from Cameron’s sample — while there’s no guarantee of success (the pressure change and inherent difficulty in culturing microbes both present significant hurdles), any cultured species would be closely scrutinized and provide mountains of data for years to come. Not only could we sequence genomes from cultured species, but we could organize sophisticated experiments to figure out exactly what nutrients they need, their metabolic pathways, and novel compounds produced that all contribute to adaptation in the deep sea. We may soon have alien life growing in a Southern California lab!

These approaches alone will give you an unprecedented view into life in the Mariana Trench. But we can still do more with that half core.

Cameron noted that the ocean floor he saw was lunar-like, smooth and featureless–but that doesn’t mean the environment is exclusively the realm of microbes. In fact, we know that bigger (albeit still microscopic) species like foraminifera do live in the Challenger Deep (Todo et al., Science, 2005), and Cameron saw amphipods swimming around before the sample had even been returned to the lab. Which means we can probably get some cool visuals if we take another drop of mud and peer at its contents under the microscope. If there are amphipods and forams, there will be nematodes in Cameron’s sample. If nematodes can live ~3km deep within the fracture water of South African mines, they can certainly put up with a little bit of pressure and scraps of food in the Hadal zone. So yeah, we should be able to get some pictures like this (for inspiration and general awesomeness):

I’m not done yet. We can still get more from that core, including:

• Characterizing the chemical makeup of the sediment. This can be done via methods such as stable isotope analysis, and we can ask questions such as: Can we pinpoint the original source of the organic matter in the Challenger Deep? What type of food is available for organisms down there?  What does that say about conditions and species’ habitats in the deepest ocean trenches?
• Sediment geochemistry. What type of sediment is down there? Where did it come from (what continent or ocean region) and what trajectory might it have taken as it slowly sunk to the deepest depths?

All in all, Cameron’s sample will fundamentally contribute to our knowledge about some big questions in biology, such as:

Biological adaptations to life in extreme environments

Tim Shank, a deep-sea biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, says that the waters above Challenger Deep are extremely unproductive; there is little algal life at the surface, and, therefore, less food is cycled down to deeper waters. “If it had been a trench with a productive water column, like the Kermadec Trench near New Zealand, I think he would have seen much more biology,” says Shank. However, sediment samples are certain to contain billions of microbes.

Insight into what life might be like on other planets:

The mud could contain exotic species of microbial life that may not only advance our understanding of the deep ocean but also help in the search for extraterrestrial life. For instance, scientists think Jupiter’s moon Europa could harbor a global ocean beneath its thick shell of ice—an ocean that, like Challenger Deep, would be lightless, near freezing, and home to areas of intense pressure. (See “Could Jupiter Moon Harbor Fish-Size Life?”)

So for those of you that scoffed at the botched sampling, there’s some serious scientific amazingness that awaits us in that half core of mud.

The post Challenger Deep: What we can learn from a single, half core of mud first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Among both scientists and non-scientists there is skepticism about James Cameron’s “Deep Sea Challenge” dive into the Marianas Trench on Sunday and what it really achieved for society.  We keep getting asked: why should we do this and what do we get from Cameron going to the deep?  Deep-sea exploration is expensive, difficult and dangerous. Why should anyone go, let alone he?

One of our more cynical colleagues on Twitter stated:

“Rich asshole builds his own sub and dives really deep. Yawn. Gullible scios and journos mistake such vanity tourism for important discovery”

And one of us [Dr. M] admits that he was also skeptical of the importance of all of this to begin with, but that was before the exciting events of Sunday evening.

There is precedent for this in other fields.  Consider alpha taxonomy (the description of new species), for example, which is where one of us [para_sight], started his scientific career.  The first step to cataloguing new biodiversity is to go out there and collect some samples and take a look; it really is that simple!   As the taxonomy builds, you have to go out ever further and look ever closer, but the process is the same and it is generally NOT built on specific hypotheses, despite how it may be stated in grant applications ;)    Alpha taxonomy is exploratory research in exactly the same way as Cameron’s deep sea mission.  He dove to the Marianas Trench in search of new life, whereas para_sight dissected the guts of fish species that had never been necropsied before in search of new species of parasitic worms.  We don’t think anyone would argue that taxonomy is not science, so why would deep sea exploration not also be?

 “Which is a better investment, science or exploration?  The question is almost as old as the space program itself, and answering it won´t get any easier as humans move toward establishing a lunar base. But could science be an inevitable outgrowth of exploration?”

– David Tenenbaum

We agree with this view that exploration is simply the inductive first step towards more formal deductive science, which brings us to first reason why we should explore:

1.     Exploration is about observation, the first step of the scientific process.  Without exploration we do not have the intellectual fodder for scientific discovery

We may not even know what we should be asking! :

2.     Exploration is about knowledge, about expanding our horizons and answering questions that we haven’t even thought of asking yet

Thus:

3.     Through exploration we can gain knowledge about earth, life, and potentially other planets.

Of course exploration also has immediate and tangible benefits.  Doing new things means doing them in new ways and, necessity being the mother of invention, technology advances hand in hand with exploration:

4. Exploration leads to technological and engineering innovation as we strive to meet new challenges.

5.     To explore the unknown means discovery with ramifications unseen. 

“Throughout history, the great nations have been the ones at the forefront of the frontiers of their time. Britain became great in the 17th century through its exploration and mastery of the seas. America’s greatness in the 20th century stemmed largely from its mastery of the air.”-NASA Administrator Michael Griffin. “”I believe America should look to its future – and consider what that future will look like if we choose not to be a spacefaring nation.”

Undoubtedly one metric of society is its culture of exploration of new frontiers in space, technology, Earth but in the arts and sciences in general.  Put simply:

6.     Through exploration, nations become great.

We should visit the moon or trench simply because we have not been there before or not been there enough.  To not go is to deny our very nature.  We should go because we are driven to rise to a challenge presented:

7.     A humans we are a naturally curious species, we deny our humanity if we do not explore the unknown world around us. 

To meet the obstacles, both seen and unforeseen, of exploration requires the dissolution of borders, barriers, languages, and dispute.  We must cooperate.

8.     Exploration allows for the unification of humanity around great achievement.

Importantly, how do we excite the public and youth about technology and science?  How many kids wanted to be astronauts when they grow up?  How many wanted to be marine biologists because they saw Cousteau exploring the oceans?  If we want to inspire in education and get away from standardized tests and No Child Left Behind, we need to offer new heroes and new dreams.  STEM may be about math, technology, and science, but it all starts with inspiration:

9.     Exploration allows us to inspire others to be explorers and scientists.

As we write this we feel that the most important one, which we save for last, nobody ever states seriously.  Sure all these others are important but they do not touch the core of why exploration is important.  We will no longer be ashamed or apologetic about the fact that:

10.     We should explore because it’s cool, awesome, and amazing.

And given the opportunity any of us would have traded places with Cameron.

The post 10 Reasons Why We Should Explore The Deep first appeared on Deep Sea News.

In the 1989 James Cameron sci-fi movie The Abyss, there’s a scene when Ed Harris’ character dons a special environmental suit that allows him to breathe an oxygen-laden liquid.  Thus protected from the risks of crushing deep-sea pressures (no air = no voids to collapse), he drops from a deep submerged research facility into the inky depths of an abyssal canyon to find and disarm a lost weapon.  During the descent, robbed of speech by the liquid he’s breathing, he’s forced to communicate with his colleagues on the base using text messages tapped out on a forearm console.  What ensues is one of the more tense scenes in sci-fi history as Harris suffers first the effects of pressure, then tackles the errant weapon, and eventually stumbles upon a remarkable submarine alien race in the movie’s climax, all communicated piecemeal to his colleagues on the base in choppy text speech.  Rarely have little green letters appearing on black screen carried so much drama.  Have some new friends down here. Guess they’ve been here awhile…

The whole scene has an eerily prophetic feel in light of exciting news that James Cameron has, himself, made a historic descent in a new submersible beyond the abyssal depths, to the hadal reaches of the deepest part of the world’s oceans: the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench, south of Guam in the west Pacific.  This event marks the first occasion that a manned vehicle has been to Challenger Deep since the first and only time it ever happened when, in 1960, Don Wash and Jacques Piccard descended in the bathyscaphe Trieste.  That storied 1960 mission occurred during the heyday of modern US exploration when, fueled by the intense international competition and brinksmanship of the Cold War, Americans could and did tackle any challenge: space, speed, altitude and depth.  In the wake of the Trieste effort, the submersible Alvin was built 4 years later and became the flagship deep sea vehicle for the US and arguably the world, for the next 40 years, even though it has never had the capability of returning to Challenger Deep.

Times change.  The motivations for exploration are different these days and we think it’s fair to say diminished somewhat.  Space folks are experiencing much the same effect, most recently epitomized by the cancellation of the space shuttle project without a viable replacement vehicle for near-earth operations.  Yes, marine science, engineering technology and the motivation for exploratory missions have all changed in the interceding 52 years since Trieste and Deep Challenger.  One constant is that Alvin is still with us; indeed, Alvin is the only human occupied vehicle (HOV) left for deep-sea research in the US.  Think about that for a second: the only vessel that can take humans to the deep sea in America is 48 years old.  The same age as this:Of course we’re being hyperbolic; Alvin is no way a rusted hooptie.  It has been completely renovated and refitted several times and is still a very advanced research tool.  Our point is more that the original design is pretty long in the tooth and you have to wonder if starting from scratch using current design principles we might be able to devise a better tool.  The same has of course been said many times for the space shuttle.

Not that deep sea research has waned for lack of manned research tools; far from it.  Advances in remotely operated vehicle (ROV) technology have seen a veritable explosion of deep sea research and some remarkable discoveries that are still occurring at a rapid rate today.  The discoveries of these remote controlled robot explorers have included the hydrothermal vent communities, the exploration of mid ocean ridges, the census of marine life and discovery of deep reefs, brine pools, cold seeps and other extraordinary habitats that prove that the deep sea is anything but a cold lifeless desert.  HOV’s have been used for some of these missions too, but ROV’s certainly seem to be the tool of choice these days.  Why is that? The answer is basically pragmatism.  There are incredible challenges to sending people into the abyssal depths and beyond.  The pressures can exceed a thousand atmospheres, which has been described as equivalent to inverting the Eifel Tower and resting its point on your big toe.  That kind of pressure means that a titanium sphere is about the only object that can maintain a 1 atmosphere internal environment.  By contrast, no passenger means no need for air spaces at all, so ROV’s can be built more cheaply and easily, and without the need for complex life support systems that can ensure the safety of the vehicles occupant(s).  An ROV can allow for longer bottom times not constrained by tired pilots or scientists with small bladders.  ROV’s allow for a whole array of scientists to participate in the dive, all sitting in the same control center in the mother ship watching HD monitors.  Opposed to the 1-2 that can fit into a submersible.  The rise of the ROV is therefore rational, sensible, effective and … boring.

Boring? BORING??  Yes, boring.  We say that because we think it’s largely those in the business of researching the deep sea who can look past the removal of the human element and derive deep satisfaction from ROV operations, by focusing instead on the substantive returns on the topic of their research.  Often times they are able to do this out of the luxury of having at least tasted the 1^st hand HOV experience themselves.  They know what it looks like out the porthole, so can better relate to what shows on the video feed coming back from an ROV.  Other times it’s a purely rationalist thing: scientists know that they’re going to get more bang for their research buck from an ROV, so that’s where they invest their efforts, research funds and emotional energy.

It’s a reasonable question to ask then: What is the value of the HOV in modern deep sea research? We have to give a slightly disappointing answer here, which is that we don’t really know.  If one applies that purely pragmatic approach, then ROV’s will probably win every time.  That’s a pity, because to do so is to overlook the inspirational and aspirational elements of the HOV approach.  One does not have to have been to a hydrothermal vent in Alvin to appreciate HOV’s anymore than one has to have been to the moon on Apollo 11 to appreciate Armstrong and Aldrin.  Our position is this: the idea of humans traveling to extreme environments, challenging and overcoming technical and engineering obstacles to do things not yet done, that’s the stuff that’s going to inspire kids to a career in science, not an economically rationalist analysis of research ROI that favors a robotic approach.

As we sat on our respective couches tonight hanging on to every tweet from Cameron and crew (‘cos hell knows, the mainstream media didn’t cover it much, but that’s another post for another day), we felt that we were participants.  When Cameron launched, we launched with him.  As he descended, we waited patiently for each update on his depth and progress (thanks @PaulGAllen!).  When, near the end, 30 minutes went by without any word, we were filled with anxiety and consternation.  And finally, when that silence broke with the statement that Cameron had reached the bottom, we sighed with relief and cheered for his success!  We celebrated because we understand that this represents a profound moment in our history.  From thousands of kilometers away, we participated.  We are reminded of our friends cheering for teams in the current NCAA tournament.  Why not just let robot play?  Why do we need humans?  Because human involvement allows us all to participate.

All of which brings us back to James Cameron (@jimcameron).  Here we have a wealthy individual who has had phenomenal success in another sphere of human endeavor and has then chosen to spend some of his wealth to do something done only once before, and do it a new way for the first time in half a century.  It’s not like he just decided to do this yesterday; Cameron has been doing deep sea dives for years and has over 70 under his belt, which is more than many scientists.  He is often quoted as saying that he makes blockbuster movies to support his real passion for deep-sea exploration.  How do we get aboard that gravy train?! You need only look at the aforementioned scene from The Abyss, or perhaps at the rainforest flora of Avatar’s megadiverse planet of Pandora (all of which look remarkably like benthic invertebrates of various flavors), to see that the ocean and the life within it have influenced him deeply.

We are not afraid to say that we are inspired by his commitment and his willingness to put his money and effort where his mouth is, by pushing the envelope of human exploration.  And yes, even we, with our charismatic marine biology research, aspire to his achievements, too: We would love to be in that little sphere and to peer out that fist-sized porthole and see things never seen by anyone before.

The question that remains unanswered is: “Is it science”?  We would argue emphatically YES.  Cameron’s team did equip their sub with a manipulator arm and suction sampler and they plan to return with specimens from the Challenger Deep, which Trieste could not, although a few ROV’s have done so in the interceding period.  Of course, we hope that this will only be the first of many dives, that Alvin has a new stable mate and the world has a new full-depth-capable research submersible.   The team also had many technological challenges to overcome in the construction of the Deep Challenger submersible, so it’s science from an engineering perspective too.  Doubtless they will gather abundant amounts of video data that can be used to answer scientific questions, just as it can be used to make compelling National Geographic shows.  And the whole endeavor is exploratory in nature, and ocean exploration is and always has been the realm of science.  Observation is, after all, the first step of the scientific method!

Why, then, might some people dismiss the Deep Challenger mission as a rich guy’s boondoggle?   It’s partly the person doing it.   Cameron is not a scientist by training and will likely not turn the results of this expedition into, say, peer-reviewed papers, so perhaps it’s considered pseudo-scientific, but we think this is a dour view that does little justice to the motivations of Deep Challenger and the societal values of this and all explorations.  Even if you put aside any and all pretense to science in this mission (which would be unfair), then simply by virtue of the attention that Cameron’s success will bring to deep-sea research, the mission will have been an unmitigated success.  Indeed, one only need look at the media excitement over the perceived “race to the bottom” (in which Cameron, Richard Branson and Sylvia Earle were supposedly competing to be the first back to Challenger Deep) to see the power of HOV exploration to raise the profile of deep sea research.  In this “race to the bottom” story, however manufactured, we see the media reaching for the kind of compelling conflict that motivated the space race in the 60’s, drama that ultimately shaped the nation’s perceptions of science and engineering for two generations.  Doesn’t that tell you something about the extraordinary potential value of exploratory science?

There’s a great opportunity offset here, too: every column inch spent talking about the wonders and challenges of deep sea exploration is one less inch spent on the latest overpaid celebrity without any real accomplishments or why this pair of pants is must-get for 2012.  Plug in a new name or a new designer and it is the same regurgitated news from last year.  By contrast, every deep dive reveals something new and exciting in the oceans.  Why then is the entire annual ocean exploration budget just a fraction of our national science budget (which is in turn an undersized slice of the federal budget)?  And why has NOAA just zeroed out the budget for the National Undersea Research Program?  Cameron has described this development as “piss-poor” and we definitely agree.

For all these reasons we think it’s time for marine biologists to proudly step into the spotlight offered by the fantastic achievements of the Deep Challenger team.  We need to seize this opportunity to show the public that there is still so much yet to learn in the deep, and that exploration, far from being remote and esoteric, is possible and still inspiring, right here, right now, on this planet.  We should admire the adventurous spirit of James Cameron and to embrace him as a new and legitimate celebrity advocate with tremendous capacity to advance the cause of the marine sciences.  Who knows, by so doing, we might well be able to secure a better funding future for other deep sea research programs and thereby advance science, however you want to define it.  In short, when Cameron succeeds, we all succeed.

The post James Cameron’s Deep Sea Challenge: a scientific milestone or rich guy’s junket? first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Here it is in his own words:

This is incredibly exciting news for anyone entranced by deep sea exploration and thrilled at the prospects of humans returning to the deepest place on earth after 52 years (Walsh and Piccard were the only folks to ever do it, in 1960).  My pulse is racing just thinking about it.  Our best wishes for a successful mission and watch this space for more news!

The post The biggest deep sea exploration news in 50 years? first appeared on Deep Sea News.

Now, more than 50 years later, humans are nearly ready to return to Challenger Deep. This time, though, they’re planning to stay a while, collecting samples, videotaping whatever might be down there, sending out small remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) and then bringing home $10 million. Earlier this year, the X Prize Foundation made that prize money available to the first privately funded submersible to make two visits to Challenger Deep. This money, though, is little more than proof that humans are fascinated with the extreme: climbing Mount Everest, walking on the Moon, searching the floor of the ocean. Ten million dollars will only cover a fraction of the race to the bottom. And it is indeed a race; one with at least three competitors, each close to claiming the prize.

via Racing to the Bottom: Exploring the Deepest Point on Earth – Nicholas Jackson – Technology – The Atlantic.

The post Racing to the Bottom: Exploring the Deepest Point on Earth first appeared on Deep Sea News.