Funding hopes for a sea change

Abstract

US oceanographers are buoyant that new funds through the National Science Foundation will be agreed this fall for a series of new marine observatory projects. Nigel Williams reports. US oceanographers are buoyant that new funds through the National Science Foundation will be agreed this fall for a series of new marine observatory projects. Nigel Williams reports. Oceanography in the US is poised on the verge of a funding decision that could help establish a revolution. Instead of sporadic, expeditionary glimpses of the ocean from ships and submarines, researchers are hoping this fall for funds to begin establishing a permanent presence in the ocean. They have been planning an infrastructure of long-term ocean-observing outposts that can transmit round-the-clock data from remote ocean sites to shore-based scientists that may, at last, become a reality. This summer, both the House and Senate appropriations committees approved a 2007 budget for the National Science Foundation (NSF) that includes a $13.5 million payment for the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The vision is to construct a network of ocean platforms — with instruments and sensors, long-term power supplies, advanced computer command and storage capability, and fibre-optic cables or satellite and acoustic communication systems — all feeding continuous streams of data and imagery back to researchers and the internet. Just as networks of meteorological stations have revolutionised understanding of the weather, ocean observatories will give scientists an unprecedented ability to monitor long-term patterns and changes in the sea and to detect energetic, infrequent events that previously were only observed from afar. “We have made great advances in understanding the ocean since World War II”, said Alexandra Isem, the ocean technology program director for NSF. “But to take the next step, we need to be in the environment 24-7. To transform science you have to think big.” The OOI may be the biggest US program in terms of the amount of effort expended to forge collaborations among researchers who have historically pursued research through individual projects or expeditions. Now hundreds of ocean scientists have been asked to look past their own interests, conceive a common vision, and share a community resource. “This has been a historic event for us,” said John Trowbridge, a scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and director of its Center for Ocean, Seafloor, and Marine Observing Systems. “We were asked to do something that we've never done before as a community: think collectively about how to do ocean sciences and work together to set priorities on how to do that.” Because the 2007 NSF budgets proposed by the Bush Administration and approved by congressional appropriation committees both contain funding for the OOI, the initiative seems poised to launch when the final 2007 federal budget is approved in the fall. With the initiative, NSF proposes to spend $309.5 million over six years to build an integrated observatory network. Another $240 million would be paid out of the NSF research budget over eight years for maintenance and operations. The project will be managed by the scientist-led Ocean Research Interactive Observatory Networks (Orion), which will contract with oceanographic institutions and companies to build the equipment. Many of the most fundamental global processes occur in the ocean, out of human observation. The majority of earthquakes and volcano eruptions occur beneath the sea, building and consuming the Earth's crust. Mineral-rich fluids erupt from the seafloor and currents move heat and moisture around the globe. The deep ocean is also home to an extraordinary array of organisms with unique adaptations that may help throw light on evolutionary processes. Advances in communications, robotics, computing, platform design, power systems and sensor technology now make it possible to get broader and deeper views of the seas over longer periods. With internet technologies, that information can be shared in real time between researchers, policymakers, teachers and students worldwide. “The establishment of observatories and observing systems,” said Bob Detrick, WHOI's vice-president for marine operations, “will transform our understanding of the oceans and their impact on the planet's processes.” The observatory-based approach to ocean science is already changing the field. In North America, a consortium of Canadian-led institutions set up the Victoria Experimental Network under the Sea (Venus) off Vancouver Island earlier this year, and a group of researchers led by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute is about to build the Monterey Accelerated Research System (MARS) off the California coast. WHOI has been operating the Martha's Vineyard Coastal Observatory since 2002. It is expected the OOI will significantly amplify the complexity and scale of such efforts. This new wave of oceanographic research has been building for decades. The renowned researcher Henry Stommel worked on the first observatory off Bermuda in the 1950s, though the project was ultimately abandoned. “We had to work to reach a point where we could show Congress and the Administration that we knew what we wanted to do and how we were going to do it,” said Isem. “The choices have been hard because there are too many good scientific questions,” said Trowbridge. But during the summer the team was considering making it a priority to develop a vast cabled observatory off the north-west Pacific coast: a set of long-duration buoys that can provide data to fill in the gaps between existing US and international monitoring programs; two fixed, cabled, coastal observatories (one each for the Atlantic and Pacific); and a coastal ‘pioneer array’ that can be moved from one part of the world to another. If funding is approved this fall, the goal is to start construction by the end of 2007 and to launch the first OOI-related science experiments by 2008. “A commitment to OOI would mean recognition of the importance of ocean research to the nation,” Detrick said.