There's a map on the wall of my office with whole regions of the world's oceans left blank - devoid of any markings of mountain ranges or other notable characteristics. It's not that these undersea territories are empty; they're simply unexplored. We know more about the topography of Mars than we do about these areas of Earth.
The good news is that we're closer than ever to completing the map. Advanced deep-ocean exploration technologies are allowing us to discover incredible creatures, unlock the mysteries of Earth's history, even reveal the origins of life. Sophisticated sonar equipment can look through a silt layer into an ancient wreck. Remotely operated vehicles and untethered autonomous underwater vehicles give us eyes, ears, hands, and feet to probe, sample, and explore regions of the deep that not long ago were out of reach. Even better, new communications technologies now allow the world to travel along virtually with a research team. The scientific expedition no longer has to be a mysterious black box - it's an open, connected, wired platform that turns ocean explorers into avatars of the deep.
This revolution has been a long time coming. Before he set out on his 1492 mission, Christopher Columbus had to convince Queen Isabela II that he would find a shortcut to the Indies. The skeptical queen granted him just three ships. He selected a crew for the journey and, of course, ended up on American shores instead. The tedious and inexact process of planning an expedition remained in place for nearly 500 years. In 1977, we wanted to search for hot springs in the Galapagos Rift. We had to compete for grants and access to equipment. We organized a group of geologists and oceanographers based on what we hoped to find, and as it turned out, we encountered something far beyond our original intent: colonies of chemosynthetic creatures living off toxic emissions spewing from the seabed. The discovery would eventually challenge the notion that the sun is the sole source of life on our planet. But first we needed marine biologists to help explain what we were seeing. So we had to return home, write some more grant proposals, assemble a new crew, and start all over again.
What a difference a few decades can make. Finding the money to explore the Black Sea in the summer of 2003 and to return to the site of the Titanic this year wasn't much easier than arranging the Galapagos expedition - ocean exploration remains woefully underfunded. (The British Empire is said to have had more dedicated exploration ships in the late 18th century than the entire world has today.) But advanced technologies made it far less important to select the perfect mix of scientists. On both of the recent missions, we piped live hi-def video over satellite systems and used multiband VoIP to communicate with scientists all over the world - not to mention graduate and grade-school students. A virtual, multidisciplinary array of researchers joined us over the Internet2 network, weighed in on data, and helped with identifications as the expedition progressed. By taking entire scientific communities to previously unseen territories, we changed the scope, reach, and inclusiveness of our deep-ocean journey. Wired expeditions can save millions of dollars while increasing the pace of discovery.
Current deep-submergence technologies will surely seem quaint in a decade. In even less time, today's communications and Internet systems will be as outmoded as transistor radios. All of this is great for the future of deep-ocean exploration. But I do have one major worry: Where will the explorers come from? Today's children aren't ready, especially in the US - where science and math education remains woefully inadequate. Will we help them get what's needed in mathematics, history, and geology? Will they have the skills necessary to become the next deep-ocean scientists, engineers, oceanographers, or deep-sea archaeologists? Will our children and grandchildren be curious and imaginative enough to continue searching out the deepest, darkest, most mysterious corners of our world? Will we fill in the blanks on the map in my office? If we can't train the explorers of tomorrow, the best technology in the world isn't going to make much difference.
