The Other Wild Blue Yonder

By Craig Collins

We know more about the surfaces of Mars and the moon than we do about the deep ocean: NOAA estimates that more than 80 percent of the world’s ocean is unmapped, unobserved and unexplored.

The NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (OER) seeks to reveal the secrets of this unfathomed undersea world. In July of 2017, a team of explorers from NOAA and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History sent a remotely operated vehicle from NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer into a seascape so bizarre they called it the “Forest of the Weird”: colorful, odd-looking sponges, all protruding on stalks from the seamount and facing the current to catch the ocean’s microscopic food particles. One of these was a species never seen before: a bulbous sponge on a long, slender stalk that resembled the alien from the film E.T the Extra- Terrestrial.

Three years later, the “E.T. sponge,” a new genus and species, received its scientific name: Advhena magnifica, Latin for “magnificent alien.”

The discovery of a new genus of organisms doesn’t happen very often, but it was just one of the extraordinary discoveries recently made by NOAA explorers and their partners. In the past few years alone, OER conducted, participated in, or supported deep-sea expeditions that explored the mysterious deep “blue holes” off the Florida coast; found the wooden remnants of a prehistoric civilization off the Texas coast; explored in detail for the first time a hydrothermal vent system in Arctic waters; used ROVs and uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs) to explore sunken World War II wrecks around Alaska’s Kiska Island; collected environmental DNA samples from deepwater ecosystems in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico, unlocked the secrets of a 60,000-year-old submerged forest which may yield new compounds for medicines – and much, much more.

“We are the only organization across all of government who has the mission to explore the ocean,” said Dr. Alan Leonardi, OER’s director, “to go to places in our world’s ocean that nobody has ever been to, and document what we see for the benefit of humanity.”

At NOAA’s founding in 1970, ocean exploration was envisioned as one of its core missions, but it remained a small part of its activities until a formal program was established in 2001. This program was mostly a funding mechanism for other expeditions until 2008, when NOAA acquired Okeanos Explorer; its first dedicated exploration vessel, a repurposed U.S. Navy ship.

Today OER conducts its own at-sea operations aboard the Okeanos Explorer and supports similar expeditions – either directly or through a competitive grant program – by partners in the public and private sector. OER’s mission is to gather data and information about unknown or lesser-known areas of the ocean deep and to make this knowledge available to anyone who might want to conduct a more detailed documentation of these areas – oceanographers, marine biologists, policymakers or private entities, such as energy or resource companies. For example, NOAA often works with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to create high-resolution maps and biological profiles of the Atlantic continental shelf. “We do it for exploratory reasons,” said Leonardi. “BOEM does it because they need to know what habitats exist in these areas that might be suitable for offshore energy leasing and siting decisions, which they have a mission responsibility to handle. And USGS is involved because they have labor and talented staff who know how to make sense of some of the information, in particular the geology.”

OER often partners with philanthropic organizations that sponsor ocean exploration, such as the Ocean Exploration Trust, the Schmidt Ocean Institute, and OceanX. In the spring of 2020, NOAA partnered with Caladan Oceanic, a private exploration company founded by financier Victor

Vescovo, in an expedition to explore, characterize and map unknown areas of the deepest, darkest and coldest regions of the ocean, below depths of 3.7 miles.

NOAA’s general mode of operating involves first-order reconnaissance of the ocean bottom and the water column with multibeam sonar. This initial scan yields environmental information that informs where a team should deploy a robotic vehicle to visually survey an area and collect data on temperature, salinity, chemosynthesis, dissolved oxygen, and other information that can be gathered without sampling. If biological or geological sampling is called for, it’s done with special remotely operated instruments. The live video feed of these expeditions is often collected and archived or streamed, live, to the public via onboard satellite relays.

This ability to stream live, via satellite, is incredibly useful, Leonardi said, because the regions NOAA explores are often so unfamiliar that teams don’t know what kind of expertise might be necessary. Scientists from all over the world, gathered in their own labs or sitting alone at their own desks at home, can see what’s happening in real time. “We also have the ability for people to participate by calling in to the ship directly,” he said. “Scientists can call in and actively guide dives in real time.”

It’s a unique mission, said Leonardi – less like that of most government agencies; more like that of NASA: The NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research exists to explore and expand our knowledge of an uncharted frontier, for the benefit of all humanity.