Uncharted waters: The autonomous ship that will transform ocean science

From FT by IBM

Ocean research non-profit ProMare is building a fully-autonomous, unmanned ship, that will replicate the historic journey from Plymouth UK to Plymouth US, navigated by IBM’s AI and edge computing technologies

 

The ocean was Brett Phaneuf’s playground.
The submarine builder, now based in Plymouth, UK, grew up in Boston on the East Coast of the United States.
He spent much of his spare time as a youth swimming and diving.
Later he studied marine archaeology at Texas A&M University, before switching to oceanography.

Brett Phaneuf, President of Submergence Group and Co-Director of the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (Tom Barnes for IBM & ProMare)

Phaneuf realised that one of the biggest challenges in any ocean research is collecting data at an adequate scale and depth, without endangering human life.

That was when he became interested in robotics and autonomy in ocean exploration.
With some university colleagues, he created ProMare, a small marine research non-profit.

This emerging field of technology was opening up parts of the ocean that were once inaccessible to humans − either because they were too dangerous or too hard to reach with traditional diving or ship-towed equipment.

Since then, the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies such as telematics, low-cost sensors and edge computing over the past two decades has turned Phaneuf’s hobby into a major global industry.

In 2016, Phaneuf had the idea of combining the mission of his NGO ProMare with the capabilities of a submarine manufacturing business he’d built.
The goal would be to create a fully autonomous and crewless ship capable of traversing oceans and collecting data.

“Despite two-thirds of our planet’s surface being covered in water, so far we’ve explored less than five per cent.
Autonomous technologies will help change that by providing us with safer, less expensive and more scalable options for gathering data,” says Phaneuf.

He named the vessel the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) – its official launch on 16 September 2020 was timed to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the 1620 voyage of the Mayflower that took the Pilgrims from Plymouth to the New World.

When MAS embarks on its own 3,000-mile crossing of the Atlantic in Spring 2021, it will be powered mainly by energy from the sun and piloted by artificial intelligence from IBM, the technology partner for the project.

The ship is a 15-metre-long trimaran with a long, slender hull made of aluminium.
It will be propelled by a solar-powered electric motor, with a diesel generator as backup.

MAS will be capable of updating its own route to stay safe and avoid collisions on its long voyage, which it is expected to complete in just under two weeks.
It will collect data throughout its journey.

The Mayflower Autonomous Ship (Credit: Oliver Dickinson for IBM & ProMare)

“We are doing it to push the boundaries of marine research and many other ocean industries,” says Phaneuf, who is Co-Director of the Mayflower Autonomous Ship project.
“The possible applications of marine AI are huge – from ocean science, through commercial shipping, to oil and gas, security and defence.”

Mike Stevens, Executive Director of the Navy League of the United States, and retired 13th Master Chief Petty Officer of the US Navy, says that the MAS project will help “revolutionise” the maritime industry.
“What happens in the oceans impacts all of our lives, whether we know that or not,” he says.
“This technology will play a vital role on how we conduct our lives on a day-to-day basis.
This is just the beginning – who knows where it’s going to go.”

AI and autonomy

Autonomy is a spectrum.
At one end is cruise control in a car.
At the other is the Mayflower Autonomous Ship, which requires no human intervention to sense, think and make decisions at sea.
Humans can help guide the ship in problematic or high-risk situations; however, for most of its transatlantic voyage the ship will be on its own.

The Mayflower Autonomous Ship (Credit: Tom Barnes for IBM & ProMare)

The core of the ship’s autonomous technology is a new class of marine AI developed by Phaneuf’s team and known informally as the AI Captain.

The MAS will have the same data set as other ships, generated by on-board radar, sonar, GPS, Automatic Identification System (AIS) and weather station.
However, the AI Captain has some notable differences.
For example, it has multiple on-board digital cameras which feed into the ship’s computer vision system running on IBM Maximo Visual Inspection software, which is normally used in manufacturing and civil engineering to spot faults.

Over the past two years the system has been trained on millions of maritime images from open source databases, as well as those collected by Phaneuf’s team at their R&D station in the Plymouth Sound in the UK.

It can now recognise and distinguish other ships, buoys, breakwaters, pieces of land and floating debris.
Correctly identifying their characteristics and knowing how certain obstacles behave, and how to steer clear of them, is vital to avoiding accidents.

The AI Captain collates data to build a hazard map for the ship.
It then uses IBM’s decision automation software to assess the current situation against the Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea – the rules of the sea.

Ray Spicer, Vice President, Defense and Intelligence at IBM Federal

This rules-based software, called Operational Decision Manager, is used throughout the financial services industry to authorize loans or to personalize customer offers.

Because MAS can’t rely on a stable network connection in the middle of the ocean, the ship’s systems run on small, powerful computing devices installed deep inside the central hull, which synch with the IBM Cloud when bandwidth allows.
This ‘edge computing system’ also helps to reduce latency and increase the speed of decision making.

“The qualities that you look for in a great naval captain come from years of experience at sea – having a keen awareness of all the factors that can affect the performance and safety of your ship and crew,” says Ray Spicer, Vice President, Defense and Intelligence at IBM Federal, and retired Navy rear admiral.
“A good captain takes all those factors into consideration, weighs the risks and makes critical decisions which are often required immediately, as dictated by the situation.
Replicating what makes a good captain with AI is no small feat – you can’t teach experience - but it is certainly within the realm of possibility to train these systems to be highly capable to operate autonomously.”

I want to be able to say to people that this can be done.

Despite the many difficulties such a venture poses, Phaneuf remains confident: 

"I want kids today to be fearless and have the determination to achieve. It’s about science and adventure. Rekindling a sense of wonder. We have to succeed.”

Links : 

• MarineLink : AI- and Solar-powered Autonomous Ship Mayflower Launched
• Mayflower  
• Artificial Intelligence : A(I)hoy, mateys: IBM’s crewless ocean research ship to launch ‘very soon'
  

Google's mega-capacity new transatlantic submarine cable is ready for action

From ZDNet by Liam Tung

Google's Transatlantic Dunant submarine cable system is ready for service, almost two-and-a-half years after announcing the project to bolster network capacity and resilience for Google Cloud customers.

The Dunant subsea cable connects Virginia Beach in the US with Saint-Hilaire-de-Riez on the French Atlantic coast, becoming Google's 14th subsea cable.
Dunant is one of Google's recent private subsea cables, including: Curie, between Chile and Los Angeles; Equiano, between Portugal and South Africa; and Grace Hopper, a cable connecting New York to London, UK and Bilbao, Spain.

Image Credit: Dunant Submarine Cable System

Dunant, says Google in a blogpost, "expands Google's global network to add dedicated capacity, diversity, and resilience, while enabling interconnection to other network infrastructure in the region."

The cable has the capacity to deliver a massive 250 terabits per second across the Atlantic.

Google explains Dunant features a 12 fiber pair space-division multiplexing (SDM) design, a first of its kind. This design allows pump lasers and optical components to be shared among multiple fiber pairs and improves system availability.

The new capacity from Durant should help customers run apps better in the cloud and take advantage of the latest in machine learning in the cloud. 

The next subsea cable to come online will be the Grace Hopper, scheduled to go live in 2022.It will give Google Cloud a massive global network of fiber optic links and subsea cables to support its 24 Google Cloud Platform regions, and over 100 Cloud CDN locations.

Google parent Alphabet yesterday reported that Google Cloud brought in revenue of $3.83 billion on losses of $1.24 billion for Q4 2020.
The cloud business includes includes Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Google Workspace (formerly G Suite).
This was the first earnings update Alphabet broke out Google Cloud earnings.
Google Cloud's full-year 2020 revenues were $13,059 billion, up 50% year-on-year, but it made a hefty loss of $5.61 billion. Google is beefing up its Google Cloud business.
Google Cloud was the largest component of new hires in Q4 of 4,149 people.

New other submarine cable :

The Amitié cable system (consortium comprises Facebook, Microsoft, Aqua Comms, Vodafone (through Cable & Wireless Americas Systems, Inc.) is a 6600 km trans-Atlantic submarine cable connecting Massachusetts in the U.S., Le Porge in France, and Bude in the United Kingdom.

Links :

• TheFastmode : Google's New Dunant Submarine Cable System with Space-division Multiplexing Ready for Service
• IT Pro : Google’s transatlantic undersea cable ready for service 
• Total Telecom : The French Connection: Orange boasts two submarine cables linking France to the US
• ComputerWeekly : Orange announces submarine cable linking US East Coast to France 
• Business Insider : Google is laying a giant new undersea internet cable stretching from New York to the UK and Spain
• Forbes : Google Is Building Its Huge Private Subsea Cable Infrastructure
• GeoGarage blog : Facebook and Microsoft are laying a giant ... / Google's first private trans-Atlantic subsea ...  / This map shows the explosive growth of ...  / How the Internet travels across oceans / Plumbing the depths of the seas in the ...  / Russian intelligence agents reportedly went ...

In the oceans, the volume is rising as never before

Cargo on its way to the port of Vancouver in British Columbia.

Credit...Alana Paterson for The New York Times

From NYTimes by Sabrina Imbler

A new review of the scientific literature confirms that anthropogenic noise is becoming unbearable for undersea life.

Although clown fish are conceived on coral reefs, they spend the first part of their lives as larvae drifting in the open ocean.
The fish are not yet orange, striped or even capable of swimming.
They are still plankton, a term that comes from the Greek word for “wanderer,” and wander they do, drifting at the mercy of the currents in an oceanic rumspringa.

When the baby clown fish grow big enough to swim against the tide, they high-tail it home.
The fish can’t see the reef, but they can hear its snapping, grunting, gurgling, popping and croaking.
These noises make up the soundscape of a healthy reef, and larval fish rely on these soundscapes to find their way back to the reefs, where they will spend the rest of their lives — that is, if they can hear them.

But humans — and their ships, seismic surveys, air guns, pile drivers, dynamite fishing, drilling platforms, speedboats and even surfing — have made the ocean an unbearably noisy place for marine life, according to a sweeping review of the prevalence and intensity of the impacts of anthropogenic ocean noise published on Thursday in the journal Science.
The paper, a collaboration among 25 authors from across the globe and various fields of marine acoustics, is the largest synthesis of evidence on the effects of oceanic noise pollution.

“They hit the nail on the head,” said Kerri Seger, a senior scientist at Applied Ocean Sciences who was not involved with the research.
“By the third page, I was like, ‘I’m going to send this to my students.’”

Anthropogenic noise often drowns out the natural soundscapes, putting marine life under immense stress.
In the case of baby clown fish, the noise can even doom them to wander the seas without direction, unable to find their way home.

“The cycle is broken,” said Carlos Duarte, a marine ecologist at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia and the lead author on the paper.
“The soundtrack of home is now hard to hear, and in many cases has disappeared.”

Drowning out the signals

ImageSeismic air guns on a seismic vessel in waters off Brazil.

Credit...Leo Francini/Alamy

In the ocean, visual cues disappear after tens of yards, and chemical cues dissipate after hundreds of yards.
But sound can travel thousands of miles and link animals across oceanic basins and in darkness, Dr.
Duarte said.
As a result, many marine species are impeccably adapted to detect and communicate with sound.
Dolphins call one another by unique names.
Toadfish hum.
Bearded seals trill.
Whales sing.

Scientists have been aware of underwater anthropogenic noise, and how far it propagates, for around a century, according to Christine Erbe, the director of the Center for Marine Science and Technology at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, and an author on the paper.
But early research on how noise might affect marine life focused on how individual large animals responded to temporary noise sources, such as a whale taking a detour around oil rigs during its migration.

The new study maps out how underwater noise affects countless groups of marine life, including zooplankton and jellyfish.
“The extent of the problem of noise pollution has only recently dawned on us,” Dr. Erbe wrote in an email.

The idea for the paper came to Dr. Duarte seven years ago.
He had been aware of the importance of ocean sound for much of his long career as an ecologist, but he felt that the issue was not recognized on a global scale.
Dr. Duarte found that the scientific community that focused on ocean soundscapes was relatively small and siloed, with marine mammal vocalizations in one corner, and underwater seismic activity, acoustic tomography and policymakers in other, distant corners.
“We’ve all been on our little gold rushes,” said Steve Simpson, a marine biologist at the University of Exeter in England and an author on the paper.

Dr. Duarte wanted to bring together the various corners to synthesize all the evidence they had gathered into a single conversation; maybe something this grand would finally result in policy changes.

The authors screened more than 10,000 papers to ensure they captured every tendril of marine acoustics research from the past few decades, according to Dr. Simpson.
Patterns quickly emerged demonstrating the detrimental effects that noise has on almost all marine life.
“With all that research, you realize you know more than you think you know,” he said.

The endangered Maui dolphin is bound to a specific biogeographic range and cannot relocate to quieter waters.

Credit...Richard Robinson/Nature Picture Library, via Alamy

Dr. Simpson has studied underwater bioacoustics — how fish and marine invertebrates perceive their environment and communicate through sound — for 20 years.
Out in the field, he became accustomed to waiting for a passing ship to rumble by before going back to work studying the fish.
“I realized, ‘Oh wait, these fish experience ships coming by every day,’” he said.

Marine life can adapt to noise pollution by swimming, crawling or oozing away from it, which means some animals are more successful than others.
Whales can learn to skirt busy shipping lanes and fish can dodge the thrum of an approaching fishing vessel, but benthic creatures like slow-moving sea cucumbers have little recourse.

If the noise settles in more permanently, some animals simply leave for good.
When acoustic harassment devices were installed to deter seals from preying on salmon farms in the Broughton Archipelago in British Columbia, killer whale populations declined significantly until the devices were removed, according to a 2002 study.

These forced evacuations reduce population sizes as more animals give up territory and compete for the same pools of resources.
And certain species that are bound to limited biogeographic ranges, such as the endangered Maui dolphin, have nowhere else to go.
“Animals can’t avoid the sound because it’s everywhere,” Dr. Duarte said.

Even temporary sounds can cause chronic hearing damage in the sea creatures unlucky enough to be caught in the acoustic wake.
Both fish and marine mammals have hair cells, sensory receptors for hearing.
Fish can regrow these cells, but marine mammals probably cannot.

Luckily, unlike greenhouse gases or chemicals, sound is a relatively controllable pollutant.
“Noise is about the easiest problem to solve in the ocean,” Dr. Simpson said.
“We know exactly what causes noise, we know where it is, and we know how to stop it.”
 

 

 

In search of quiet

Many solutions to anthropogenic noise pollution already exist, and are even quite simple.
“Slow down, move the shipping lane, avoid sensitive areas, change propellers,” Dr. Simpson said.
Many ships rely on propellers that cause a great deal of cavitation: Tiny bubbles form around the propeller blade and produce a horrible screeching noise.
But quieter designs exist, or are in the works.

“Propeller design is a very fast-moving technological space,” Dr. Simpson said.
Other innovations include bubble curtains, which can wrap around a pile driver and insulate the sound.

The researchers also flagged deep-sea mining as an emergent industry that could become a major source of underwater noise, and suggested that new technologies could be designed to minimize sound before commercial mining starts.

The authors hope the review connects with policymakers, who have historically ignored noise as a significant anthropogenic stressor on marine life.
The United Nations Law of the Sea B.B.N.J. agreement, a document that manages biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction, does not mention noise among its list of cumulative impacts.

The U.N.’s 14th sustainable development goal, which focuses on underwater life, does not explicitly mention noise, according to Dr.
Seger of Applied Ocean Sciences.
“The U.N. had an ocean noise week where they sat down and listened to it and then went on to another topic,” she said.

The paper in Science went through three rounds of editing, the last of which occurred after Covid-19 had created many unplanned experiments: Shipping activity slowed down, the oceans fell relatively silent, and marine mammals and sharks returned to previously noisy waterways where they were rarely seen.
“Recovery can be almost immediate,” Dr. Duarte said.

Alive with sound

Squat lobsters on Seamont X, a submarine volcano in the Philippine Sea.

Credit...NOAA Vents Program

A healthy ocean is not a silent ocean — hail crackling into white-crested waves, glaciers thudding into water, gases burbling from hydrothermal vents, and countless creatures chittering, rasping and singing are all signs of a normal environment.
One of the 20 authors on the paper is the multimedia artist Jana Winderen, who created a six-minute audio track that shifts from a healthy ocean — the calls of bearded seals, snapping crustaceans and rain — to a disturbed ocean, with motorboats and pile driving.

A year ago, while studying invasive species in sea grass meadows in waters near Greece, Dr. Duarte was just about to come up for air when he heard a horrendous rumble above him: “a huge warship on top of me, going at full speed.”

He stayed glued to the seafloor until the navy vessel passed, careful to slow down his breathing and not deplete his tank.
Around 10 minutes later, the sound ebbed and Dr. Duarte was able to come up safely for air.
“I have sympathy for these creatures,” he said.

When warships and other anthropogenic noises cease, sea grass meadows have a soundscape entirely their own.
In the daytime, the photosynthesizing meadows generate tiny bubbles of oxygen that wobble up the water column, growing until they burst.
All together, the bubble blasts make a scintillating sound like many little bells, beckoning larval fish to come home.

Links :

• The Guardian : Cacophony of human noise is hurting all marine life, scientists warn
• ScienceMag : The soundscape of the Anthropocene ocean
• Time : Underwater Noise Pollution Is Disrupting Ocean Life—But We Can Fix It
• EcoMag : Healthy Oceans Need Healthy Soundscapes 
• GeoGarage blog : Understanding noise pollution in the oceans / The oceans are vibrating with humanity's ... / Understanding noise pollution in the oceans / Why listen to the ocean's voices? / New international standards needed to manage ocean noise / Noise pollution could frustrate fish / Stemming the rise of a sea of noise

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Mathieu Rivrin website

 

A face (Poseidon or Liberty statue ?) in a wave (tempest Justine) in Bretagne (Lesconil)

courtesy of V&V

2020 was hottest year on record by narrow margin, Nasa says

Global temperature change from 1850 to 2020. One stripe per year. Data:
@metoffice

 

From The Guardian by Oliver Milman

 
Last year was by a narrow margin the hottest ever on record, according to Nasa, with the climate crisis stamping its mark on 2020 through soaring temperatures, enormous hurricanes and unprecedented wildfires.

Globally, 2020 was the hottest year on record, effectively tying 2016, the previous record.

Overall, Earth’s average temperature has risen more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1880s.

Temperatures are increasing due to human activities, specifically emissions of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and methane.

NASA SVS

 

The average global land and ocean temperature in 2020 was the highest ever measured, Nasa announced on Thursday, edging out the previous record set in 2016 by less than a tenth of a degree.

Due to slightly different methods used, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) judged 2020 as fractionally cooler than 2016, while the UK Met Office also put 2020 in a close second place.

 

The European Union’s climate observation program puts the two years in a dead heat.

Regardless of these minor differences, all the datasets again underlined the long-term heating up of the planet due to the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation and other human activities.

 

The world’s seven hottest years on record have now all occurred since 2014, with the 10 warmest all taking place in the last 15 years.

There have now been 44 consecutive years where global temperatures have been above the 20th-century average.

Scientists said average temperatures will keep edging upwards due to the huge amount of greenhouse gases we are expelling into the atmosphere.

“This isn’t the new normal,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

“This is a precursor of more to come.”

The record, or near-record, heat came despite the moderately cooling influence of La Niña, a periodic climate event. 

“While the current La Niña event will likely end up affecting 2021 temperature more than 2020, it definitely had a cooling effect on the last quarter of the year,” said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, which found 2020 was narrowly the second hottest year on record.

“It suggests that we’ve added an equivalent of a permanent El Niño event worth of global warming in just the last five years,” Hausfather added, in reference to the counterpart climate event that typically raises temperatures. 

“Records like this further reinforce the need to reduce our emissions sooner rather than later.”

2020 was one of the warmest years on record, with many extreme weather events and #climatechange impacts.

This @NOAA map highlights some of them

The climate crisis is drastically altering environmental processes across the globe, as the scientific analyses of 2020 show.

The annual average sea ice extent in the Arctic was, at 3.93m sq miles, the joint smallest on record, tied with 2016, while oceans were “exceptionally warm”, Noaa said, with just two previous years recording hotter marine temperatures.

Average annual snow cover for the northern hemisphere was the fourth lowest on record.

Rising heat in the atmosphere and water is causing glaciers to melt, rising sea levels, as well as helping fuel larger and more destructive storms.

The US, buffeted by an unprecedented Atlantic hurricane season in 2020, was hit with a record number of major disasters last year, costing tens of billions of dollars and resulting in several hundred deaths.

“Global warming won’t necessarily increase overall tropical storm formation, but when we do get a storm it’s more likely to become stronger,” said Jim Kossin, an atmospheric scientist at Noaa.

“And it’s the strong ones that really matter.”

Wildfires, fueled by vegetation parched by prolonged heat, ravaged huge areas of California and Australia last year, while the Arctic experienced astonishing temperatures well above average.

“This year has been a very striking example of what it’s like to live under some of the most severe effects of climate change that we’ve been predicting,” said Lesley Ott, a research meteorologist at Nasa.

The UK Met Office has already predicted that 2021 will also be among the hottest ever recorded, with the world now “one step closer to the limits stipulated by the Paris agreement”, said Colin Morice, senior scientist at the Met Office.

Governments will meet later this year in Scotland for crucial UN talks aimed at building upon the Paris deal, which committed countries to avoiding a disastrous global temperature rise of 1.5C from pre-industrial levels.

“We are headed for a catastrophic temperature rise of 3-5C this century,” warned António Guterres, secretary general of the UN. 

“Making peace with nature is the defining task of the 21st century. It must be the top priority for everyone, everywhere.”

 

Links :

• NASA : 2020 Tied for Warmest Year on Record / NASA Analysis Shows
• The Guardian : Climate crisis: record ocean heat in 2020 supercharged extreme weather
• Abc : Climate change pushed ocean temperatures to record high in 2020, study finds 

A journey to the bottom of the oceans — all five of them

A lander named Skaff is deployed as part of the Five Deeps Expedition last year.
The team’s three landers carried scientific equipment, sensors and cameras to the ocean floor.
Other submersibles transported crew members to the deepest places on Earth.
(Reeve Jolliffe)

From WP by Lucinda Robb

Tired of being stuck at home? Maybe what you need right now is to escape somewhere that the coronavirus, political polarization and devastating natural disasters are nowhere to be found.
But where on Earth could you find such a place? Simple: at the bottom of the ocean.
Fortunately, Josh Young’s “Expedition Deep Ocean: The First Descent to the Bottom of All Five of the World’s Oceans” is ready to take you there, on a journey that is exciting, suspenseful and ultimately successful.

Make no bones about it — this is an old-fashioned adventure story.
Young has written more than 20 books, five of them New York Times bestsellers, and his narrative is wonderfully readable, weaving in scientific, geographic and engineering details effortlessly (a feat much harder to pull off than generally acknowledged).
There’s humor and drama and headaches galore, not to mention celebrity cameos and more than one trip to the Titanic.
Imagine Jon Krakauer’s “Into Thin Air” with a happy ending.

(Pegasus Books)

The expedition is conceived, financed and led by Victor Vescovo, who seems like a character Tom Clancy dreamed up on a sugar high.
This overachieving Texan and former Naval Reserve intelligence officer holds degrees from MIT, Harvard and Stanford (Condoleezza Rice was his adviser), flies fixed-wing jets and helicopters, and founded a billion-dollar private-equity firm in Dallas.
In his down time he completed the Explorers Grand Slam, for which you must summit the tallest peaks on all seven continents and ski to both the North and South poles.
Like Alexander the Great, who supposedly wept because there were no more worlds to conquer, Vescovo sets a goal of traveling to the bottom of all five oceans because he needs a new challenge.

Coming up with the idea is the easiest part.
At nearly seven miles below sea level, the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean is the deepest point on Earth, a far greater depth than Mount Everest is tall.
The pressure at that depth is mind boggling — Young compares it to having 290 fully fueled 747 airplanes stacked on top of you.
As recently as 2018, only three human beings had ever made the descent, on two different trips more than 50 years apart.
Not only had no humans been to the bottom of the other four oceans, scientists weren’t exactly sure how far down they went.

Speaking of which, can you name all five oceans? If not, you aren’t alone.
It says something about their widely ignored status that you can probably name more planets millions of miles away than the immense bodies of water that govern our lives in ways we hardly understand.
(By the way, the ocean everybody forgets is the Southern Ocean, nicknamed the “screaming sixties” because of the ferocious storms in those latitudes.)

Assisting Vescovo is an international crew of characters, each with their own expertise and often with their own agendas.
It isn’t just a matter of throwing money at the problem, you have to design, build, outfit and plan the entire expedition.
No one who has ever built a house will be surprised by all the things that go wrong in the course of their journey, but the massive expenses do put home cost overruns into perspective.
At a crucial point in their mission a section of the submersible, a titanium structure shielding its occupants from the colossal pressure, literally breaks off.
Miles from shore they figure a way around it.
(Just in case you were wondering, humans can’t actually walk unprotected on the bottom of the ocean — they would get squashed like a bug long before they could drown.)

Interestingly, it is the little stuff that goes awry.
The amount of ill will generated by who gets to post what on social media could serve as a plot line for Bravo’s “Real Housewives.” The challenges of navigating international permits and the rules of exclusive economic zones mean that despite having maritime law on their side, they frequently tangle with local authorities eager to confiscate something, even if they aren’t sure what.

The scientific goals of the expeditions are always secondary, although splurging for the sonar mapping system turns out to be key in verifying their world-record-holding status.
But it isn’t just about bragging rights.
It is a small miracle to design and build something that can dive miles below the sea’s surface repeatedly and reliably.
As Vescovo says, “It’s opening a door that didn’t exist.”

By the epilogue they are ferrying high-profile figures like Prince Albert of Monaco to the bottom of the Mediterranean with a matter-of-factness that would have seemed highly improbable, if not entirely impossible, just 10 chapters earlier.

While the expedition succeeds in its stated goal, the publicity is something of a bust.
Even back in May 2019, before the coronavirus and the presidential election dominated the news, Vescovo’s singular accomplishments generate far less interest than the fact that they found a plastic bag at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
It’s a long way from Charles Lindbergh’s ticker-tape parade for crossing the Atlantic.

But along the way to reaching all five “deeps,” something interesting happens.
What started out as Indiana Jones on the ocean floor morphs into a story of how progress is made — first in fits and starts, and then in a great rush.
In the end, the same traits that brought Vescovo great wealth in the business world are the ones that allow him to succeed in this daunting venture.
Knowing when to take a calculated risk and when to abort are key, but small details like having really good coffee for your workers matter, too.
Perhaps most important, Vescovo is wise enough to know when to back off and allow his flawed, exhausted but still impressive team members room to breathe and correct their mistakes.

Fundamentally, “Expedition Deep Ocean” is a book about tackling — and solving — really difficult problems.
You need talented people with different skills, a level-headed leader and patience for initial failures.
It will take a lot of money, and you may never get much credit for your accomplishment.
More than just a fun read, these are lessons that we all could use right now.
Can we send a copy to Washington?

Links :

• ESRI : Illuminating the deep
  
• GeoGarage blog : Victor Vescovo: Adventurer reaches deepest ...  / Inside the daring mission to reach the ... / An explorer took a $48 million submarine on ... / Stories of an extraordinary world : the last of ... / Wall Street trader reaches bottom of Atlantic ... / Mariana Trench: Deepest-ever sub dive ...
  

How to turn your superyacht into a scientific research vessel

From Boat International by Oliver Steeds
 
Want to support ocean conservation and help scientists understand our oceans?
Oliver Steeds, CEO of Nekton, outlines the changes you can make to your boat today to turn it from a superyacht to a marine science research vessel...
“Citizens of the world…. We are running out of excuses to not take action and running out of time… The time to act is now”.

President Danny Faure of Seychelles was hundreds of feet below the ocean’s surface in a two-person research submersible on Nekton’s First Descent mission broadcasting live to the world.
It was the first subsea presidential address and became the biggest news story of the day globally.

Nekton helped President Danny Faure of the Seychelles make a first descent for ocean exploration.
Image courtesy of Nekton.

Whilst this submersible was launched off a research vessel, the same Triton submersibles and larger models are being launched off more and more yachts.
For scientists, conservationists and ocean explorers, yachts – and sometimes these submersibles – are often the gatekeepers of the ocean.
Few have the pass to enter.

The ocean remains the least-explored part of our planet.
It is our last great frontier.
We know the largest waterfall on Earth is underwater along with the largest mountain range and the majority of volcanic activity.

We know there are over 100,000 seamounts, or undersea mountains, greater than 1,000 metres and that only a handful have ever been visited, let alone biologically sampled.
And whilst the average depth of the ocean is over 4,000 metres, the majority of life below 200 metres glows.
Over 90 per cent of biodiversity, 3.7 billion years of our evolutionary heritage, remains to be discovered.

The ocean is our planet’s life support system.
It regulates our climate, provides food security for billions and essential medicines including the first diagnostic tests and treatment for Covid-19.
The ocean produces over half of our oxygen, captures most of our anthropogenic heat and is the largest carbon store on our planet.

But rather than supporting life on Earth, the ocean itself may soon need to be put on life support.
It remains the least-protected part of our planet, and only 2.5 per cent of the ocean is currently highly protected.
Increasingly, scientists, climate change experts and governments are calling for 30 per cent protection by 2030.
There’s much work to be done.

Sadly, too many still have their heads buried in the sand.
But marine scientists are pushing back the boundaries of knowledge, which is crucial because we can’t protect what we don’t know.

Nekton mission director Oliver Steeds.
Image courtesy of Nekton.

“With endurance to operate in coastal or remote locations, diving capability, tenders, small cranes and accommodation, the private yacht fleet can provide access to the sea to enable and empower marine scientists to work on the frontlines of our changing planet,” explains Mike Pownall, Nekton’s head of marine operations and a veteran of planning, implementing and leading complex offshore and subsea operations.

With a bit of deck space, autonomous underwater vehicles, small “suitcase ROVs” (remotely operated vehicles), drop cameras or baited cameras, sensors, hydrophones and buoys, even water collection systems can all be readily deployed and recovered.
Add a slightly larger crane and you can deploy submersibles, and even a larger ROV if the vessel can hold station.

Nekton has used an Omega Seamaster Submersible to 3D map coral habitats.

Image courtesy of Nekton.

Research teams vary in size, from one up to a dozen or more depending on the goal.
Without too much bother, critical research can be undertaken on ocean transits, whilst wildlife and surface observations, coral reef research or a vast range of physical, chemical and biological research activities can all be achieved at most locations visited by yachts.

With more available deck space, a modular or containerised system can be considered to house diving systems, submersible operations or even a laboratory.

The Arksen 85 eco-explorer wll be equipped with solar panels.
Image courtesy of Arksen.

Utilising a larger tender or the main yacht – with a hull mounted or “over the side” pole mount multibeam echosounder – owners can map the uncharted depths and discover new subsea mountains, trenches, ridges and features and even name them in perpetuity.
Yachts can also be the stewards or sentinels of the sea.
With meteorological logging equipment, yachts can provide vital data to inform weather and climate science.

“From the design phase up, yachts often have extraordinary capabilities built in that can have dual use for owners and scientists,” explained Andrew Winch, a leading yacht designer.
“From power systems to isolated air conditioning in specific rooms through to, more obviously, the tenders and diving equipment, if you can be flexible and adaptable, the opportunities are endless.”

At 57m in length, the bold and rugged Heesen XVenture offers research facilities alongside luxury lifestyle features.
Image courtesy of Heesen.

In simple terms, it is all relatively straightforward.
There are thousands of marine scientists who have vital research that needs to be undertaken at sea.
All it takes is the willingness from yacht owners to invite scientists onto their vessels.
Yachts for Science has been set up to be the match-makers – a partnership between the marine research institute Nekton and BOAT International, Arksen and the Ocean Family Foundation.

We can all do our bit.
Will you?
To help, here’s an introductory guide to the yacht requirements for a range of different research activities along with what more can be done with a few additions or discreet tweaks.

Internal workspace

Scientists will need some sort of workspace, the size of which will vary depending on their research activities.
Some simple aspects could be considered:
A dry lab with work surfaces for equipment
Computational infrastructure: networking for laptops, capability to receive GPS and Gyro feeds from the bridge, additional monitors for survey and video analysis
Storage for equipment and, if samples are being collected, then a standard refrigerator (four degrees) and freezer (minus 20 degrees) and a smaller specialist minus-80-degree freezer are all helpful

Designed by Winch, the Heesen XVenture upper saloon offers owners a spot to relax while cruising through icebergs.
Image courtesy of Winch Media.

External workspace

A number of aspects can easily make deck space functional to allow “plug and play” adaptability for scientists, including:
Deck power – multiple ports in operational areas
Fresh and saltwater connections
Deck space (variability determines size of research equipment that can be deployed)
“Wet Lab” – if sample collection is required (could also be an internal area with direct access to the deck)

Diving

For near shore or coastal operations, a yacht or tender can act as a dive-support base with supply from shore of equipment or divers.
Expect scientists to bring their own personal dive gear.
To operate further afield, diving capability could include:
Equipment: Compressor, tanks, repair kits, spare kits, weight, buoys, freshwater basins to rinse equipment, drying/storage area
Safety: Oxygen kits, diving-specific first aid
For technical (TEC) diving, below 30 metres: specialist compressors, Nitrox and Trimix makers, recompression chamber and other equipment will be required.
On the plus side, technical divers usually bring their own equipment

Owners of the Heesen XVenture explorer can choose to keep a Triton submersible on board.
Image courtesy of Heesen.

Submersible operations

Increasing numbers of large yachts have submersibles, and different models from Triton, U-Boat Worx or Seamagine could all be considered.
Cranes and support equipment vary for different types of submersibles and depend on sizes ranging from 2.5 tonnes (two persons, 100 metres), 4 to 5 tonnes (three persons, 500 metres), 8 tonnes+ (three to seven persons+, depths from 300 to 1,000 metres).
Key functionality to support submersible operations include:
Workbench, tools, HP oxygen bottles, storage (spares etc.), high-pressure air compressor, battery charging, tracking and underwater communications systems and a retractable awning to cover the submersible (equipment provided by sub supplier)

For near shore or coastal operations, a yacht or tender can act as a dive-support base with supply from shore of equipment or divers.
Image courtesy of Heesen.

Cranes and winches

For the deployment of oceanographic equipment, deck space, crane and electric winch capability – often in combination with RIBs and tenders – define what is possible and can enable the utilisation of:
Towed nets (hand deployed/recovered)
Baited remote underwater video (BRUV) and/or baited drop cameras
Remotely operated vehicles
AUV’s (autonomous underwater vehicle), ASVs (autonomous surface vehicle), gliders
Small “metocean” (meteorological and physical oceanography) monitoring equipment for short or long-term deployments – such as weather buoys, tide gauges or current monitoring devices
CTD (with hydrographic deck winch) for water chemistry research

The Arksen 85 has been designed to cruise anywhere in the world.
Image courtesy of Arksen.

Increasing specifications

A-Frames, hydrographic winches, hydraulic deck cranes, dynamic positioning, hull mounting of specific equipment, removable sacrificial deck frames and worktops all increase the scale of research operations and activities

 

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