Oceanus Online Archive
How the Isthmus of Panama Put Ice in the Arctic
The long lag time has always puzzled scientists: Why did Antarctica become covered by massive ice sheets 34 million years ago, while the Arctic Ocean acquired its ice cap only about 3 million year ago?
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Paving the SeafloorBrick by Brick
Most of Earth’s crust is manufactured at the bottom of the sea. Deep beneath the waves and beyond our view, magma erupts along a 40,000-mile volcanic mountain chain that bisects the ocean floors and encircles the globe. The lava flowing from these mid-ocean ridges solidifies into new ocean crust that spreads out and paves the surface of our planet.
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The Evolutionary Puzzle of Seafloor Life
Most of Earth’s crust is manufactured at the bottom of the sea. Deep beneath the waves and beyond our view, magma erupts along a 40,000-mile volcanic mountain chain that bisects the ocean floors and encircles the globe. The lava flowing from these mid-ocean ridges solidifies into new ocean crust that spreads out and paves the surface of our planet.
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Listening Closely to ‘See’ Into the Earth
Today, excitement and anticipation is growing because of new generations of seismographs designed for use in the oceans. These new instruments will comprise a new national pool of instruments for use by the scientific community.
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Shifting Continents and Climates
Sixty-five millions years ago, dinosaurs had just become extinct, and mammals were starting to dominate the planet.
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Moving Earth and Heaven
The mountains rise, are lashed by wind and weather, and erode. The rivers carry mud and debris from the mountains into the ocean, where they settle onto the relatively tranquil seafloor and are preserved. The sediments bear evidence about where they came from, what happened to them, and when. By analyzing, measuring, and dating these seafloor sediments, scientists can piece together clues to reconstruct when and how fast their mountain sources rose to great heights millions of years ago, and how the climate and other environmental conditions may have changed in response.
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Seeding the Seafloor with Observatories
Scientists extend their reach into the deep with pioneering undersea cable networks
H2O (Hawaii-2 Observatory) – In 1998, scientists used the remotely operated vehicles (ROV) Jason and Medea to create the pioneering long-term seafloor observatory called H2O (Hawaii-2 Observatory). They spliced an abandoned submarine telephone cable into a termination frame. The frame relays power and communications to a junction box, which serves as an electrical outlet for scientific instruments.
The Remarkable Diversity of Seafloor Vents
Since 1982, I had spent most of my waking hours examining pieces of seafloor vent deposits that had been recovered during a routine dredging operation along the Juan de Fuca Ridge off the Pacific Northwest coast.
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When Seafloor Meets Ocean, the Chemistry Is Amazing
Scientists are discovering that abundant quantities of methane gas are continually seeping from the seafloor throughout the oceans. This widespread but overlooked natural phenomenon has potentially dramatic implications on world energy supplies, life in the oceans, and Earth’s climate.
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Conduits Into Earth’s Inaccessible Interior
Jules Verne wrote about a way to journey to the center of the earth, but unfortunately, we haven’t found it yet. So we really don’t know what happens deep inside our planet.
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The Engine that Drives Earth
Poets and philosophers have celebrated the timelessness of the land around us for eons, but the solid Earth is actually a very dynamic body. Great tectonic plates are in constant motion at Earth’s surface.
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If Rocks Could Talk…
Every rock on Earth contains a clock, a thermometer, and a barometer.
Read MoreVoyage to Vailulu’u
It was like a pirate’s treasure map. A dotted line clearly showed the trail, but at the end of it, no “X” marked the spot. Then a telltale clue caught…
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Seeding the Oceans with Observatories
Ship-borne expeditions have been the dominant means of exploring the oceans in the 20th century. Scientists aboard ships made the observations and gathered the data that confirmed the revolutionary theory of plate tectonics, which demonstrated that the earth is a complex, multi-faceted system that changes over time. But that revelation also exposed a major shortcoming of the ship-based exploratory approach: its very limited ability to quantify change.
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A Well Sampled Ocean
Unlike the oceans, the sky is relatively visible and accessible to us. But in the ocean, the situation is quite different. Conditions and processes at work on any given day in the ocean are usually a mystery to us.
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NEPTUNE: A Fiber-Optic ‘Telescope’ to Inner Space
NEPTUNE is a proposed system of high-speed fiber- optic submarine cables linking a series of seafloor nodes supporting thousands of assorted measuring instruments, video equipment, and robotic vehicles that could upload power and download data at undersea docks. Unlike conventional telephone cables, which supply power from shore in a straight line, end to end, NEPTUNE would operate like a power grid, distributing power simultaneously and as needed throughout the network. Working much like a campus data network (with nodes analogous to buildings and each instrument like a workstation), NEPTUNE would provide real-time transmission of data and two-way communications.
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Seafloor to Surface to Satellite to Shore
The next great leap in our understanding of the earth-ocean system will require us to put our “eyes” and “ears” in the ocean to observe the dynamic processes going on there as they are happening, in real time.
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Plugging the Seafloor with CORKs
Hidden beneath the seafloor throughout most of the world’s oceans lies a massive, dynamic plumbing system that is a central component of our planet’s inner workings.
Read MoreOutposts in the Ocean
Oceanographers and climatologists have something in common with politicians and stock market analysts: They are all trying to get a grasp on a complex, ever-shifting system.
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New Coastal Observatory Is Born
The Martha’s Vineyard Observatory will have sensors mounted on two seafloor nodes, at depths of about 5 and 15 meters, respectively, connected to a shore station via a buried cable. Instruments mounted on the nodes will continually monitor mean sea and wave heights, current strengths, seawater turbulence, subsurface sediment movement, sunlight intensity, and the temperature, salinity, and carbon dioxide levels of the ocean?s waters.
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Launching the Argo Armada
The Argo program proposes to disperse 3,000 floats, like the one below, throughout the oceans to collect data on oceanic conditions that can be periodically transmitted to shore via satellite.
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Putting H2O in the Ocean
A major obstacle impeding our ability to understand many of the earth’s fundamental, ongoing dynamics–quite frankly–has been a dearth of electrical outlets and phone jacks on the seafloor.
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Where the Surf Meets the Turf
The gentle lapping of waves on the beach is a metaphor for enduring tranquility. However, the thin zone where the surf meets the turf is one of the most turbulent, complex, fast-moving, constantly changing places on Earth.
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