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| Feb. 29, 2004. 01:00 AM |
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Exploring the sea, without ships
Canadian project signals new wave in marine
biology
Undersea sensors will revolutionize deep-sea
research
PETER
CALAMAI
SCIENCE WRITER
VICTORIAAn impish grin graces the face of Verena
Tunnicliffe, a top Canadian marine biologist and world expert
on ocean-floor hot vents. Her voice drops to a conspiratorial
whisper.
"People are always phoning to ask what they can do with
dead whales that wash up on the beach," she says. "I want to
sink one and look at what happens."
Tunnicliffe's intention is purely scientific, a
long-standing fascination with studying organic input into the
deep ocean.
But the desire is also a clear sign of the dawning of a
new era in ocean science, a research revolution in which
Canada and Tunnicliffe's University of Victoria are leading
the way.
No longer will marine scientists have to go out to the
ocean for their studies. The ocean is about to come right into
their offices, via a flood of data and images through
fibre-optic cable and the Internet.
Tunnicliffe soon will be able to investigate phenomena
like that decaying whale 24/7, with digital pictures and sonar
scans; continuous readings of temperature, current and
salinity; and even a benthic respirometer, a device that
measures how fast organisms living in ocean-bottom sediments
suck up oxygen.
Tunnicliffe also will be able to dispatch a robotic
submersible to collect samples of rotting flesh and foul gas
for further analysis.
In reality, a number of other scientific studies are
likely to take priority over putrefying whales when the $10.2
million VENUS (Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea)
project gets underway here this summer. They include:
 Tracking
the real-time migration of millions of salmon past Vancouver
Island, using a picket fence of transmitter-receivers.
Providing
up-to-the-minute forecasting of marine conditions for
freighters and container ships in North America's most heavily
trafficked stretch of water.
Unravelling the
life-cycle mysteries of glass sponges, anemones, urchins,
octopi and other marine dwellers in a biologically rich
region.
Eavesdropping with
underwater hydrophones on killer whales communicating within
their pods.
Testing
techniques to provide an early warning if earthquakes trigger
a slide of the unstable Fraser Delta that could rupture
submarine electrical cables to Vancouver Island and produce
disastrous tsunamis.
And, most
important, selling oceanographers, biologists and other marine
scientists on this new way of doing their research.
A few researchers have voiced disappointment that a
romantic way of life is ending for the rugged individuals who
braved lurching ship decks or jack-knifed into claustrophobic
submersibles to descend into the sunless depths.
Tunnicliffe, who has survived her share of cramped
submersible dives, laughs: "I don't mind the idea of sitting
at home in front of a computer screen in January."
Nor do many others.
The idea has mushroomed from a tentative debut using
abandoned submarine telephone cables a decade ago to a
proposed global network of underwater observatories.
More modest installations are also due at Memorial
University in Newfoundland this year and next year at the
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California.
Probably in August, VENUS will dip its first
fibre-optic toe into the waters of Saanich Inlet, one of the
most intensively studied marine basins in the world because of
two federal research centres the Institute of Ocean Studies
and the Pacific Geoscience Centre and the nearby university.
Canada's remotely operated submersible, ROPOS, is also based
nearby.
The three-kilometre Saanich system will include a
sensor array, called a node, at 100 metres with extension
cables running deeper into the inlet.
"It's a very rich biologically," says Tunnicliffe.
"When we stopped ROPOS out there, we were surrounded by
herring and there's also a lovely little outcrop of rock with
all sorts of anemones all over it."
Saanich Inlet also poses the type of environmental
questions best answered through the continuous monitoring of a
seabed observatory, such as explaining an apparent warming
trend in the bottom layers and unravelling the annual cycle of
oxygen depletion and renewal that comes with a buildup of
noxious hydrogen sulphide.
Two more lines will follow next year up to 30
kilometres of cable across the Strait of Georgia, featuring
three nodes, and another cable into the Juan de Fuca Strait.
VENUS is also the harbinger of a much more ambitious
international seafloor observatory that will criss-cross the
key tectonic plate off the West Coast with 3,000 kilometres of
fibre-optic cable linking about 30 nodes, functioning as
mini-labs.
Known as NEPTUNE (Northeast Pacific Time-series
Undersea Networked Experiment), this $330 million project is
supposed to begin operating in 2008.
The Canadian portion can meet the deadline, says
project head Chris Barnes, a University of Victoria professor
of Earth sciences.
NEPTUNE Canada's $62 million funding, shared between
Ottawa and British Columbia, starts flowing this year and
covers five years of development and operations.
But that's only 30 per cent of the overall cost. The
bulk of funding is being borne by the American partner
universities and is supposed to come from the U.S. National
Science Foundation starting late next year. But the Bush
administration allotted the NSF only a disappointing 2 per
cent increase in its proposed budget for fiscal 2005,
prompting the resignation of the agency's director.
"Canada has to make a whole bunch of decisions on the
assumption that the U.S. doesn't have any money, but on the
hope that they'll come to the table in two years' time," says
Barnes.
Stung before by Washington's dysfunctional budgetary
process, Ottawa insisted that NEPTUNE Canada devise a fallback
plan to go it alone if necessary.
No one wants this, least of all the University of
Washington's John Delaney, the inspirational driving force
behind NEPTUNE.
"We need to look at oceans and land as one system,"
Delaney told the recent American Association for the
Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle. "We're just
beginning to put our heads beneath the surface and investigate
the parts of our planet that have been out of sight."
An intriguing part of that hidden world involves the
dozen tectonic plates that constitute the Earth's surface,
floating slabs that grind against one another and produce
mountains in past and present-day earthquakes. The smallest is
the Juan de Fuca plate that stretches 200,000 square
kilometres along the coasts of British Columbia, Washington
and Oregon and is home to NEPTUNE.
With nodes spaced 130 kilometres apart, NEPTUNE will
give researchers their first real chance to study
little-understood features of the ocean depths, including sea
mounts that appear to function as breathing holes for the
Earth's crust, slow-motion earthquakes, microbial snowstorms
and gas hydrates, sometimes called the ice that burns.
"NEPTUNE has the power to allow community experiments,
something not possible with the small grants that individual
researchers receive," says Barnes.
Three Ontario universities Toronto, Waterloo and
Carleton are among the project's academic partners.
The first operational seafloor observatory, however,
will be VENUS and Tunnicliffe voices the eagerness of many who
have been involved in its lengthy planning.
"I'm really looking forward to discussing what we're
actually doing rather than what we plan to do," she says.
More information: http://www.venus.uvic.ca; http://www.neptunecanada.ca/; http://www.ropos.com/
Additional
articles by Peter Calamai
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