A New Paradigm
"A New Paradigm"
Book excerpt
Date: 2000
Source: Ballard, Robert D., with Will Hively. "A New Paradigm." The Eternal Darkness: A Personal History of Deep-Sea Exploration. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
About the Author: Robert Duane Ballard (1942–) is a marine geologist better known to the public because of his many published books on deep-sea exploration and the discovery of the wreckage of Titanic in 1985. He was part of the first team to dive with Alvin, the first manned submersible for deep-sea exploration used at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI). He worked as a researcher for thirty years at WHOI, where he became the head of the Deep Submergence Laboratory and holds the title of Scientist Emeritus in the WHOI Department of Applied Ocean Physics. Ballard was one of the first scientists to appreciate the advantages of deep-sea unmanned vehicles over manned ones for improving the study of oceanic abysses and other bottom-sea features. He founded and led the Jason Project, an interactive science educational program for elementary school children.
INTRODUCTION
The United States began to systematically explore the oceans in 1807, a Thomas Jefferson initiative that created the Survey of the Coast to study tidal currents, collect samples from the bottom sea-floor, and map near-shore sea-floor topography. In 1845, under the lead of Charles Henry Davis, the following goals were established for research vessels: to determine surface temperature and water temperature at different depths; to observe characteristics of the sea bottom; to determine direction and speed of currents at surface and various depths; to measure the depth of coastal seas; and to collect and study marine plant and animal life. Since then, the Gulf Stream has been regularly and repeatedly observed and charted at different seasons and throughout the year. The Gulf of Mexico began to be studied with the first sounding machine in 1874 and the resulting bathymetric map was the first accurate map of a portion of deep ocean. In 1922, echo sounder was introduced and the Vessel Guide was sent to the North of the Pacific Ocean through the Panama Canal and the coast of Mexico, comparing wireline and acoustic soundings in depths from 100 to 4,617 fathoms. In 1933, the Vessel Guide mapped a seamount that was later named Davidson Seamount, the first major feature mapped underwater. As new technologies were developed during the first three decades of the twentieth century, the sciences of Oceanography, Marine Biology, Geology and Geophysics, Marine Chemistry, and Geochemistry were gradually taking shape. However, it wasn't until after World War II that deep-sea exploration technology started to advance with great speed, ultimately leading to the three great resources of the 1960s: the Deep Tow instrument system, the multibeam sounding instruments known as Sonar Array Sounding System, and manned research submersibles.
The first U.S. Navy manned submersible was the bathyscaph Trieste, invented by a family of Swiss engineers, the Piccards. Trieste was initially used by the Navy in 1960 to take scientists to the deepest spots ever visited by humans. However, it was not well suited for research science purposes and the Navy decided to fund WHOI to design and build a new manned submersible that could better meet the needs of a small research crew. In 1964, Alvin was launched, a manned submersible with capacity for carrying three persons on board. With Alvin, a new era of deep-sea scientific exploration was inaugurated.
New imaging techniques such as low-light television cameras and fiber optics provided a new leap in deep sea exploration. The WHOI's Deep Submergence Laboratory, under the lead of Ballard, designed the diving craft Argo, a tethered instrument capable of sending clear images to the ship on the surface and working in 20,000-foot (6,100-meter) depths. In 1985, Argo was tested for mapping the debris of the submarine Thresher, which sunk in 1963 off Cape Cod. In the same year, Argo was used to find the wreckage of Titanic in the North Atlantic. In 1986, the prototype of a remotely operated craft, Jason Jr., was developed to operate from Argo with fiber optic cables and transmit color images and other data to research scientists on the surface. Jason Jr. was first tested using Alvin instead of Argo to capture color images of the Titanic, nine months after Argo's discovery of the wreckage, while some technological challenges were being tackled at WHOI. The Argo / Jason craft system was finally tested in 1988 with the new and larger remotely operated Jason exploring the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Sicily. The result was the discovery of the first deep-sea archeology site and the first image of a hydrothermal vent in that sea. The following decades saw the development of new tethered crafts, such as the Tethered Unmanned Work Vehicle System (TUWVS). TUWVS is equipped with heavy-lift hydraulic manipulators and carries motorized and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) for data transfer, being therefore capable of performing a number of tasks, such as the recovery of military and civilian hardware. An example was the recovery of the F-14D Tomcat that crashed at sea near Point Loma in California in August 2005.
PRIMARY SOURCE
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SIGNIFICANCE
Manned deep-sea submersibles played a crucial role in the advancement of marine sciences and oceanography in a time when robotics and other technologies were still in their infancy. They took scientists to new territories never dreamed of before, allowing direct observation, selective sample collection, and measurement in the deep sea. However, they were risky, expensive, and limiting, due to both their capacity (only two or three individuals could be onboard at a time) and underwater topographic features such as narrow canyons, caves, or other features that would limit scientists' access. The advent of ROVs and new imaging technologies constituted a widening of horizons for researchers by allowing a larger number of observers to access real-time images and control the equipment from the surface. They could also see images of places and collect dwelling life-forms and other samples where only a small robot could enter. For instance, in 2004 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) started Operation Deep Scope in the northern Gulf of Mexico. In this complex geological region, an ROV equipped with the eye-in-the-sea camera made it possible to film animals under extremely dim light and without disturbing them, a task impossible for a larger and noisier craft carrying humans inside.
The Argo / Jason vehicle system inaugurated a new concept in deep-sea exploration by adding new information capability, access, and mobility to prospective instruments. It also allowed the simultaneous access of a greater number of researchers to information in real time. Further technological advances has led to new generations of ROVs, capable of performing a growing number of complex operations at lower costs and with better efficiency than manned submersibles could ever do.
FURTHER RESOURCES
Books
Ballard, Robert D., and M. Hamilton. Graveyards of the Pacific: From Pearl Harbor to Bikini Atoll. Washington, DC: National Geographic Books, 2001.
Web sites
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "Explorations: Operation Deep Scope: Seeing with 'New Eyes'." 〈http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/04deepscope/welcome.html〉 (accessed January 17, 2006).
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ( NOAA). "History of NOAA Ocean Exploration." 〈http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/history/early/early.html〉 (accessed January 17, 2006).