Every time Marcia McNutt, head of Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, heads out on an expedition, she wonders about all the things she won’t see: “The ocean is driven by occasional events, and when you go out on a boat, you just don’t know if you’re going to see one. It’s a lot of luck.” In many ways, oceanographers like McNutt face a greater challenge than astronauts: They cannot dive during bad weather, cannot visit the deepest areas for long, and have barely explored below the Arctic ice cap. Earth’s oceans cover an area nearly 10 times as large as the surface of the moon. “We need a new paradigm,” she says.
She is about to get one. Marine scientists are launching a slate of international projects that will wire the oceans, placing sensors and robots permanently at deep spots that can report back 24 -7. They plan to bring, in essence, a whole new planet into view.
Starting next year a global project called Neptune, for North East Pacific Time-series Undersea Networked Experiments, will lay wire-and-fiber-optic cable over a 200,000-square-mile region of the seismically active Juan de Fuca tectonic plate off the northwest coast of the United States. The cables will deliver tens of kilowatts of power so that scientists can plug sensors into the network, sending back real-time data on composition, bacteria, and more. Self-guided robotic devices will eventually be deployed to observe sudden events, such as volcanic eruptions, and then head to underwater bases for recharging. Unlike manned ocean voyages, which are inherently limited to a small crew of scientists, the network will be wired to the Internet, so researchers anywhere in the world can log on. McNutt’s group is building a test site for the American contribution to Neptune.
“It’ll be like the Hubble Space Telescope. It’s going to revolutionize marine science,” says John Delaney, head of the project and an oceanographer at the University of Washington.
