Life At The Bottom And Its Vast Environment

“The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy…The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion; it is the Living Infinite,” wrote Jules Verne in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The irony is striking; we rely heavily on oceans, the iconic feature of our planet, yet more than ninety-five percent of the ocean depths remain unexplored. The disparity between our dependence on the ocean and the attention it receives is marked and it is imperative that deep ocean exploration is addressed in the scientific community.

Pitch black, dead quiet and seemingly desolate, the deep sea resembles that of a far off alien world. Until recent advancements in technology, little to none has been known about the deep sea. Far beyond the natural reach of humans, only highly expensive submersibles have visited the ocean’s deepest and darkest locations. In the Pacific Northwest, an eerie 7-mile venture underwater will take you to the deepest spot on the planet, Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench.

Astonishingly, Did you know that we have better maps of the moon than we do of the ocean? (#7) It’s true! Scientists are working to make drones to explore the deep sea. Ocean Exploration is a developing science that incorporates the use of marine biology and drone technology. Ocean Exploration technology will be an overall benefit to society because 1. exploring the ocean is easier than before and 2. ocean exploration can help with monitoring the deep sea.

The world is home to many living things, the majority of life on earth though is living in the ocean with a percent of 94%. Since the beginning of the 1800s, man has been mapping the great oceans and what’s in them, but no more than 90 years ago have we started to look deeper. The ocean hasn't been completely explored, but with the advances in ocean exploration technology, scuba diving’s, and with those finds of strange creatures and treasures along the way.

The few facts that are known about the ocean and its processes are not a part of common knowledge. This is due to the lack of information that is advertised to the public, lack of

Scientists have always curious about the ocean treasure as it poses interesting challenges or solutions to the human kind. The research or exploration of the ocean has been going on for millennia with no full understanding of the ocean life, only know in parts. The scientists deploy some kind of trawl to gather samples that would study and analysed later. Though this limited information, it had still managed to keep the oceanographic exploration alive and grew every day. In the 1930s this research developed further and made an effort to send humans with a tethered vessel descending to the bottom of the seafloor giving human first-hand experience of the ocean floor.

Science versus pseudoscience is a heavily disputed topic in the scientific community. Thus, it is important to identify the two and understand the differences. Depending on the source and agenda it can be difficult to notice the difference. After researching this topic, in regards to the ocean, I found an article, “Science and pseudo-science on the ocean floor”.

Have you ever went to the beach? Swam in the ocean? Or are you scared of sharks? Well, sharks should be the least of your worries. Studies show that 95% of the ocean has not been discovered. No one knows what is lurking below the water's surface.

A 500-foot long ship complete with a giant Eiffel tower looking structure right in the middle sails through remote parts of the ocean carrying practically a whole village; complete with electricians, diesel mechanics, drillers, a captain and his crew, and a bunch of nerdy scientists. These “nerdy scientists” have one objective: to recover deep-sea sediment from the ocean floor in order to attain an age model of these sediments and reconstruct the earth’s climate.

1. One of the paramount topics we have covered in this course is oceanography (no surprises there). Rather than thinking of oceanography as “just” the study of the ocean, I have always viewed oceanography as the study of marine biology, marine chemistry, marine geology and marine physics. Before diving into any sort of detail, one can see (from the above) that oceanography incorporates four fundamental sciences into one topic; therefore, when asked to list three ways in which marine geology and marine chemistry interrelate, the possibilities are endless. Because we are to list just three examples, I am going to focus my answer on the Earth’s composition/layers. The first way these two fields interrelate is though convection currents (mantle). Density and temperature are two topics central to chemistry. Because density and temperature, along with depth, play a critical role in plate movement (geology), the plate tectonic theory is one example. The second way is through radioactive decay. Specifically, we use radioactive dating (e.g., isotope dating and half-lives) to determine the exact age of a specific geological structures. The third way these two fields interrelate is in determining the composition of the Earth’s inner core. I saved this example for last because it shows how marine physics can also be interrelated in marine chemistry and marine geology. We [scientific community] have a sound understanding of the Earth’s composition because of mass, density and temperature

Scientist who study the floor of the ocean are called geological oceanographers. The study the age, structure, and make of the ocean floor. In addition to this, they also study minerals, sediment, and marine fossils. Some of the tools they use, including drill rigs to uncover the floor, can cost up to $2 million. The also use tools that record seismic waves to study the formation of tsunamis and undersea earthquakes. Recently, geological oceanographers around the world have accepted the theory of plate tectonics. Geological oceanographers always have their master's degree. For those who were involved with research will have a PhD in addition to their master's. Advanced education in geological oceanography can prepare a person to make significant

For the past couple weeks, we have focused on the topography of the ocean floor in our Oceanography class. To end this unit, we did a project of the ocean floor, involving coloring our own map of the Pacific seafloor and reflecting on this past unit. As tedious as the map portion of the project had been, I found it to be the most effective teaching tool of the whole unit. The detailed notes and labs had still been enough to teach and understand the topography of the ocean floor, the actual color-coding of the topographical map had, at least for me, given a better appreciation of how diverse and vast the seafloor truly is. I had never given much thought to the ocean floor before this project; I knew that it did have features just as the continents did, but I never realized how vast and diverse it really is.

Submarine volcanoes, mid-ocean ridges, and submarine canyons are all grouped into the marine geology systems. Underwater structures can actually be pretty useful to marine geologists, in 1930 studies found the seafloor to have all of the same physical features on land like mountains, volcanoes, canyons and more. The seafloor is estimated to be less than 2,000,000 year old, being a lot younger than landforms. The ‘age’ difference of the two makes marine geologists’ work a lot more fun to compare in finding the way rocks are built, how the sediments are compatible and finding an estimated location of natural disasters underwater.

Ocean waves are caused by winds. Strong winds cause larger waves which usually move up and down. Looking out at the ocean, people can see infinite of waves transporting water from one place to the next. People who are in charge of studying these waves are marine scientist better known as Physical Oceanographers. They study every aspect of the ocean such as check and track the deep currents and waves from start to finish, helping them understand these waves. They see the move volume of heat, salt, and nutrient, which are important to fish, and the global climate. Physical oceanographers will often find themselves working on the ocean or in areas that contact the ocean.

Even more recently, advancements in SONAR have led to the creation of multibeam SONAR and side scan SONAR. Multibeam SONAR emits and receives sound over a large area, and allow oceanographers to create the most accurate model a seafloor, a Holographic survey. The time between when the SONAR beams are sent out and when they return is measured to model the ocean floor. While effective for deeper rocky bottoms multibeam SONAR does not function well in shallow flat bottoms. Thus side scan SONAR is used to model these flat bottoms, despite its detractor of not being able to determine depth (Burgera, 2016). In conjunction with the SONAR models, GPS is used to accurately construct large scale models of the ocean floor (Langer, 1991). Sidescan