Deep Sea Exploration Past + Present + Future

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Deep Sea Exploration Past + Present + Future deep sea exploration past + present + future Katy Croff Bell MIT Media Lab @katycroffbell the past ~330 BC | Aristotle wrote about Alexander the Great being lowered into the sea in a glass barrel 1521 | Ferdinand Magellan tried to measure the depth of the Pacific Ocean with a 2,400 ft (732 m) weighted line, but did not find bottom 1620 | Dutch engineer Cornelis Drebbel built the first navigable submarines 1710s | John Lethbridge built a completely enclosed suit to aid in salvage work 1749-1827 | Pierre Simon de Laplace calculated the average depth of the Atlantic ocean to be 3,962 meters by observing tidal motions on Brazilian and African coasts. 1872 | HMS Challenger set sail; discovered 715 new genera and 4,417 new species 1930 | Beebe and Barton are the first humans to reach the Deep Sea in the Bathysphere. 1960 | Jacques Piccard and LT Don Walsh set a new record of 35,800 ft aboard Trieste in the Mariana Trench 1964 | Alvin is a crewed deep-ocean research submersible owned by the US Navy and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) 1977 | Marie Tharp completed the first map of the ocean floor 1986 | First fiber-optically cabled deep-sea robot the present © ONC Exploring We are studying the impacts of the BP oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico, WATCH LIVE Now corals and other animals that live on the seafloor. USA 2009-2012: Mediterranean Black Sea Gorringe Bank Aeolian Arc SE Aegean Sea W. Mediterranean Hellenic Arc Anaximander Mountains Straits of Sicily E Mediterranean Eratosthenes Seamount Knidos F, Turkey SE Aegean Sea Kolumbo Volcano, Greece Hellenic Arc Roman Lab, URI Straits of Sicily, Italy Straits of Sicily 2013-2015: Caribbean & Gulf of Mexico Gulf of Mexico Great Bahama Bank Greater Antilles Mesoamerican Reef Montserrat Mid-Cayman Rise Windward Dominica Passage Kick’em Jenny Trinidad Cold Seeps Kick’em Jenny, Grenada Kick’em Jenny, Grenada Kick’em Jenny Ocean Networks Canada Cascadia Margin Greater Farallones NMS Central California Channel Islands NMS Southern California Galapagos Rift 2015-2016: Eastern Pacific Galapagos Islands current challenges 71 % have deep waters (200+ m) ~15% have deep water access Using current exploration methods, it will take we need to fundamentally change how we explore the ocean 10-100,000 ship-years to completely view the seafloor deep sea exploration is. inefficient expensive exclusive WE NEED A NEW APPROACH DEVELOPING LOW-COST SENSORS & PLATFORMS ADVANCING DATA ANALYSIS, ACCESS, & ARCHIVE CREATING A GLOBAL COMMUNITY OF EXPLORERS DEVELOPING LOW-COST SENSORS & PLATFORMS WAYFINDERS future ocean lab@mit MAKA NIU ADVANCING DATA ANALYSIS, ACCESS, & ARCHIVE FATHOMNET BALL-LIKE CLAM-LIKE CRUSTACEAN-LIKE DISK-LIKE FAN-LIKE FISH-LIKE FLOWER-LIKE LAMPSHADE-LIKE LATERALLY-FLATTENED LILY-LIKE OCTOPUS-LIKE PEN-LIKE PLANT-LIKE SHELL-LIKE STAR-LIKE TORPEDO-LIKE TRASH VASE-LIKE WORM-LIKE LILLI CREATING A GLOBAL COMMUNITY OF EXPLORERS MY DEEP SEA, MY BACKYARD LINDBLAD-NAT GEO EXPEDITIONS POLYNESIAN VOYAGING SOCIETY .
Recommended publications
  • Scuba Diving History
    Scuba diving history Scuba history from a diving bell developed by Guglielmo de Loreno in 1535 up to John Bennett’s dive in the Philippines to amazing 308 meter in 2001 and much more… Humans have been diving since man was required to collect food from the sea. The need for air and protection under water was obvious. Let us find out how mankind conquered the sea in the quest to discover the beauty of the under water world. 1535 – A diving bell was developed by Guglielmo de Loreno. 1650 – Guericke developed the first air pump. 1667 – Robert Boyle observes the decompression sickness or “the bends”. After decompression of a snake he noticed gas bubbles in the eyes of a snake. 1691 – Another diving bell a weighted barrels, connected with an air pipe to the surface, was patented by Edmund Halley. 1715 – John Lethbridge built an underwater cylinder that was supplied via an air pipe from the surface with compressed air. To prevent the water from entering the cylinder, greased leather connections were integrated at the cylinder for the operators arms. 1776 – The first submarine was used for a military attack. 1826 – Charles Anthony and John Deane patented a helmet for fire fighters. This helmet was used for diving too. This first version was not fitted to the diving suit. The helmet was attached to the body of the diver with straps and air was supplied from the surfa 1837 – Augustus Siebe sealed the diving helmet of the Deane brothers’ to a watertight diving suit and became the standard for many dive expeditions.
    [Show full text]
  • Divers Things: Collecting the World Under Water
    Hist. Sci., xlix (2011) DIVERS THINGS: COLLECTING THE WORLD UNDER WATER James Delbourgo Rutgers University I do not pretend to have been to the bottom of the sea. Robert Boyle, 1670 matter out of place Consider the following object as shown in an early eighteenth-century engraving (Figure 1). It is a piece of wood — not a highly worked thing, not ingeniously wrought, though it is an artefact of human labour rather than a natural body. Or is it? In the engraving, the piece of wood disappears: it is visible towards the bottom of the image, a sober pointed stump, but it is quickly subsumed by a second, enveloping entity that swirls about it in an embroidering corkscrew. What elements are here intertwin- ing? The legend beneath the engraving identifies the artefact thus: “Navis, prope Hispaniolam ann Dom 1659. Naufragium passae, asser, a clavo ferreo transfixus, corallio aspero candicante I. B. Obsitus, & a fundo maris anno 1687 expiscatus.” It describes a stake or spar from a ship wrecked off Hispaniola in 1659, which is transfixed by both an iron bolt and rough whitish coral, fished out of the depths in 1687. This collector’s item is neither the cliché of exemplarily beautiful coral nor straightforwardly a historical relic, but an intertwining of the two: the “transfixing” of a remnant of maritime technology by an aquatic agent. It exhibits the very proc- ess of encrustation. The spar is juxtaposed with the image of a jellyfish, and more proximately, engravings of Spanish silver coins, also encrusted with coral: “Nummus argenteus Hispanicus … incrustatus”, one of the labels reads.1 Still another illustra- tion, in a separate engraving, bears the legend “Frustum ligni e mari atlantico erutum cui adhaerescunt conchae anatiferae margine muricata” — a piece of “drift wood beset with bernecle [sic] shells”.
    [Show full text]
  • Robert Sténuit Fulfilling a Quest for Treasure Turned a Salver Into an Archeologist
    Robert Sténuit Fulfilling a quest for treasure turned a salver into an archeologist. ILLUSTRATION: LINDA HESLOP SALVDR, ARCHEOLQGiST Robert Sténuit By Sean Holland Robert Sténuit was well on his way to becoming a lawyer ENGLAND when he stumbled upon Harry Rieseberg's 600 Milliards BELGIUM Sous les Mers. The fictional account of diving for treasure so captured thé fancy of thé then 20-year-old student that FRANCE ITALY he abandoned his studies at thé Université Libre in Brussels to pursue a diving career. More than 10,000 underwater hours changed. I do not dive with a BC, yet hère after leaving thé university, Robert bas yet I am. I use only one regulator and, yes, I to regret his décision. Asked to name his hâve only one steering wheel in my car." favorite dive, thé 65-year-old treasure Those who wanted to dive invented salvor and underwater archeologist says their own gear when Robert began ex- coyly, "The next one, of course." The man ploring caves and sumps in Han sur Lesse who helped pioneer deep-diving mixed- in thé Ardennes région of his native Bel- gas tables in thé U.S. Man in thé Sea pro- gium in 1952, a year before he found grarn and advanced knowledge of science Rieseberg's book. "Time and again, you and history with record-breaking dives is would find your gallery ending in thé unimpressed with many of today's div- water. The only way to continue was to ing trends. dive." To push beyond thèse dead ends, PHOTO: MARC JASINSKI "Today's divers look like Christmas Robert and his buddies borrowed wetsuits Belgium's virgin territory trees with their buoyancy compensators, and crafted homemade gear.
    [Show full text]
  • A Scilly Idea
    A SCILLY IDEA Why not sail from Lands End to the Isles of Scilly and then back again in a Wayfarer Dinghy? This somewhat seemingly crazy idea came about following a successful non-stop circumnavigation of the Isle of Wight in 2014. This is an annual event that is very well organised by Jenny Jeffs, John Norman and a team of supporting volunteers from the Wayfarer Association. What a brilliant idea I thought! And so almost a year later a date was placed on the calendar that met the requirements of tide and predicted weather conditions and which also suited all the expected participants. However the weather did its At 09.30 hrs we set off from the beach in a force 4 southerly own thing, bringing the intended proceedings to a halt just 24 wind on a close reach and following a bearing of 255 degrees hours before the scheduled departure time. We soon realised that took us out past the Longships Lighthouse. Once past that the only way forward was to throw the calendar out of the this point we went to a bearing of 235 degrees to take into window and to set a date for the outbound and inbound sail account tide drift. We made a call to Falmouth Coastguard that only took account of friendly weather conditions and that giving them our passage plan, number of crew and our ETA would therefore hopefully give us safe passage. at St Mary’s. They requested our vessel type and size as well as asking if we had anybody on shore that we were in contact This approach clearly identified a departure date of the 25th with.
    [Show full text]
  • JOHN LETHBRIDGE 1675–1759 Inventor and Diver
    JOHN LETHBRIDGE 1675–1759 Inventor and Diver It is a special kind of individual who, at the age of 39 living in a comfortable home with a caring wife and large family, sets out for the dangerous life of a world-travelling treasurer-seeking sea diver. Such an individual was the inspiring character John Lethbridge. His early upbringing was in and around the hamlet of Wolborough, near Newton Abbot. A member of the well respected Lethbridge family he was a trustee of endowed parish property in that hamlet and became established as a wool trader in Newton Abbot. Unfortunately, the decline of the wool trade in Devon created serious financial problems so he started thinking about other ways to make a living. In his own words: ‘Necessity is the parent of invention, and being in the year 1715 quite reduced, and having a large family, my thoughts turned upon some extra- ordinary method to retrieve my misfortunes, and was prepossesed that it might be practicable to contrive a machine to recover wrecks lost in the sea’. Why he should have decided on a sea faring venture is not entirely clear; perhaps it was because he lived in a county fortunate enough to have the open sea on two borders and with excellent ports. Considerable sea trade existed to the Americas, Africa and China through the towns of Plymouth, Dartmouth and Brixham so tales of shipwrecks must have been told throughout the county. It is possible that these stories influenced his idea of salvaging valuable cargo from sunken vessels. 69 Lethbridge started his new venture with a couple of experi- ments.
    [Show full text]
  • Investigation Questions State Patrol Findings in Fatal Onalaska Collision
    $1 Weekend Edition Strong Saturday, June 18, 2016 Finish Former W.F. West Standout Has Big Serving our communities since 1889 — www.chronline.com Year for Huskies / Sports 1 Harold’s Burger Bar Chehalis Officer Honored Secret Ingredients, Grandmotherly Love Rick Silva’s Name Added to Lewis County Law at Heart of Centralia Burger Joint / Main 3 Enforcement Memorial After Death / Main 7 Chehalis Investigation Questions State Patrol Tentatively Findings in Fatal Onalaska Collision Set to Announce New City Manager at Next Meeting DECISION: One Finalist Previously Faced Questions Over Use of Funds By The Chronicle The city of Chehalis has not yet determined who its new city manager will be after complet- ing interviews with committees and council members. There are four finalists for the position. According to current City Manager Merlin MacReynold, the council will continue to evaluate the candi- dates with the hope of making an announcement at the June 27 council meeting. “I can say they are focusing on a couple of them, but no de- cision had been made yet,” Mac- Pete Caster / [email protected] Reynold said, although more Cari Mullinax, the mother of A.J. Mullinax, the teen driver who died last summer in a car crash on state Route 508, stands near a roadside memorial for the teenagers specific information could not on Friday afternoon near Onalaska. be released. CAUSE IN QUESTION: tragic night left by friends and please see MANAGER, page Main 13 family members of those killed. Private Investigation “It surprises me every Places Blame on time when I go by and see it’s changed,” said Cari Mullinax, Toledo School Intoxicated Driver whose 17-year-old son A.J.
    [Show full text]
  • Idstorical Diver
    Historical Diver, Number 3, 1994 Item Type monograph Publisher Historical Diving Society U.S.A. Download date 11/10/2021 02:43:18 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/1834/30846 IDSTORICAL DIVER Number 3 Summer 1994 The Official Publication of the Historical Diving Society U.S.A As you will by now know, the Society has relocated to Santa Barbara, California and this move, along with various other Society developments has delayed the publication of the Spring '94 issue of HISTORICAL DIVER. By way of catching up, we have produced a Summer double issue and have the good fortune to be able to publish with a color cover. Coinciding with the Santa Barbara relocation is the appointment, by the Board of Directors, of the first members of the HDS USA Advisory Board. This distinguished group of senior diving professionals, with extensive backgrounds in diving medicine, technical development, commercial, military and sports diving, bring in excess of 300 years of diving experience to the Society. Most of their biographies are the size of town phone directories, and have had to be severely edited for publication. We are honored and gratefulfortheir willing offers of service, and hope that we have done their biographies justice. Details start on page 4. The recently introduced, Founding Benefactor class of membership has proven to be very popular with over half of the thirty available memberships already taken. An opportunity still exists to acquire one of these unique memberships and details of it's benefits are noted on page 9. On the international front, the ongoing formation of the HDS USA as a nonprofit corporation has, by law, changed the conditions that govern our relationship with the HDS in UK.
    [Show full text]
  • 2010 Index.Indd
    Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine The Journal of the South Pacifi c Underwater Medicine Society (Incorporated in Victoria) A0020660B and the European Underwater and Baromedical Society ISSN 18333516 ABN 29 299 823 713 Index for Volume 40, 2010 March 2011 2 Index to Diving and Hyperbaric Medicine for 2009, Volume 39 KEY WORDS FOR DIVING AND HYPERBARIC MEDICINE Abalone Computers Exercise Abstracts Computers – diving Exogenous poison Accidents Constitutional amendments Expert witness Adolescents Copyright Extraglottic airway devices Aerobic capacity Coroner’s fi ndings Eyes Age Corrections Fire or explosion Air Critical appraisal First aid Air embolism DAN – Divers Alert Network Fitness to dive Allergy Data Flowchart Altitude Deaths Flying (and diving) Anaerobic Decompression Freediving Anaesthesia Decompression illness Gas gangrene Antarctica Decompression sickness Gases Antioxidants Decompression tables Gasinduced osmosis Arterial gas embolism Deep diving Gas solubility Ascent Dental Gender Asthma DES – Diver Emergency Service General interest Autobiography Diabetes Genetics Autopsy DIMS Genitourinary tract Aviation Disabilities Gleanings (from medical journals) Bacteriology Disability Haematology Baroometric pressure Disabled diver Health Barotrauma Diver numbers Health status Bell diving Diving Health surveillance Beta blockade Diving accidents Health surveys Bibliography Diving at work Hearing Biochemistry Diving deaths Helium Biology Diving industry Helium pharmacokinetics Bone necrosis Diving organisations High pressure nervous syndrome
    [Show full text]
  • San Pedro De Alcantara, 1786
    Arq. en Aguas Profundas III Especialización en Patrimonio Cultural Sumergido Cohorte 2021 Case Studies 1 Case Studies: San Pedro de Alcantara, 1786 San Pedro de Alcántara, 1786 San Pedro de Alcántara was a 64-gun ship built with tropical timbers in Cuba, in the shipyards of La Habana, in 1770/71, lost on the coast of Portugal in 1786, and salvaged throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries. The San Pedro left Callao, Peru, to Cadiz, Spain, in 1784. http://nautarch.tamu.edu/shiplab/baleal-ship-sanpedro.htm Case Studies: San Pedro de Alcantara, 1786 San Pedro de Alcántara’s holds were loaded with 600 tons of copper ingots, 153 tons of silver, and 4 tons of gold, together with a varied cargo, which included a collection of Chimu ceramics from the Hipólito Ruiz López and José Antonio Pavón Jiménez expedition in South America, from 1779 to 1788. Case Studies: San Pedro de Alcantara, 1786 Aboard were almost 400 people, between ere also a number of prisoners in irons, on the way to prison, related to the Andean uprising of 1780-81, led by José Gabriel Condorcanqui, better know as José Gabriel Túpac Amaru. Case Studies: San Pedro de Alcantara, 1786 After a long voyage, the ship hit a rocky promontory on the coast of Portugal around 22:30, in a calm and clear night, on the 2nd of February of 1786, with an extremely low tide, and was quickly destroyed. The accounts mention 128 dead and 270 survivors. Case Studies: San Pedro de Alcantara, 1786 Given the value of the cargo, the Portuguese authorities assisted in the first salvage attempts, provided warehouses to keep the cargo safe, and did their best to shelter and feed the survivors.
    [Show full text]
  • Volume 8 Issue 3 Summer 2000
    Historical Diver, Volume 8, Issue 3 [Number 24], 2000 Item Type monograph Publisher Historical Diving Society U.S.A. Download date 08/10/2021 20:44:52 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/1834/30866 The Official Publication of The Historical Diving Societies of Australia & S.E. Asia, Canada, Germany, Mexico and the U.S.A. Volume 8 Issue 3 Summer 2000 ~ Merritt-Chapman & Scott - The Black Horse of the Sea ~ • The Formation of NAUI, Houston 1960 • Voit!Swimaster MR 12 regulator • • Rebreathers at DEMA • Divers' Reunion • E.R. Cross Memorial Service • • Joseph August Schultes • UHEXSO • HISTORICAL DIVING SOCIETY USA A PUBLIC BENEFIT NONPROFIT CORPORATION 340 S KELLOGG AYE STE E, GOLETACA 93117, U.S.A. PHONE: 805-692-0072 FAX: 805-692-0042 e-mail: [email protected] or HTTP://www.hds.org/ Corporate Members ADVISORY BOARD Sponsors D.E.S.C.O. DIVERS ALERT NETWORK (DAN) Dr. Sylvia Earle Prof. Hans Hass DIVING SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL Dr. Peter B. Bennett Lotte Hass DIVE COMMERCIAL INTERNATIONAL. INC. Dick Bonin Dick Long INFLATABLE TECHNOLOGIES, INC. MARES Ernest H. Brooks II J. Thomas Millington, M.D. OCEAN FUTURES Scott Carpenter Bob & Bill Meistrell OCEANIC SEA PEARLS Jean-Michel Cousteau Bev Morgan SCUBA TECHNOLOGIES, INC. E.R. Cross (1913-2000) Phil Nuytten Henri Delauze Sir John Rawlins Founding Corporations Andre Galerne Andreas B. Rechnitzer, Ph.D. BEST PUBLISHING D.E.S.C.O. Lad Handelman Robert Stenuit DIVING SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL MARINE SURPLUS SUPPLY Les Ashton Smith OCEANEERING INTERNATIONAL, INC., WEST COAST SANTA BARBARA CITY COLLEGE SOCIETY BOARD OF DIRECTORS Members Chairman: Lee Selisky, President: Leslie Leaney, Secretary: ADVENTURES IN DIVING James Cunningham, Treasurer: Blair Mott, Directors: AMERICAN UNDERWATER CONTRACTORS, INC.
    [Show full text]
  • John Lethbridge and the Loss of the Victory
    Odyssey Papers 46 John Lethbridge and the Loss of the Victory Trevor Newman Independent Researcher, Plymouth He was a man highly esteemed for honour and integrity, and seemed to have been born for the express purpose of the discovery, as no danger ever annoyed him whilst he was at work on the wreck of a ship, with the water up to his chin and his breath expended, that one might almost say such another man was never produced. Commander Thomas Lethbridge RN, describing his grandfather, the diver John Lethbridge, 1821 (British Library, Add. Mss 9428, ff. 353-4, Thomas Lethbridge to the Reverend Daniel Lysons, 11 April 1821) * After three decades of shipwreck salvage, the pioneering veteran diver John Lethbridge approached the Admiralty in December 1744 with a proposition to seek and salvage the First Rate, 100-gun Victory using his self-designed diving-barrel. Lethbridge’s two letters of petition, and an accompanying note, are both important documents in the history of diving and for understanding the folklore that led to the belief that the Victory sank off the Caskets. This article presents John Lethbridge’s Victory letters in full for the first time, reconstructs the final hours of Admiral Balchen’s fleet, and speculates that the flagship’s loss may have been caused by her having brought by the lee after the ship was overtaken by huge waves from astern. © Odyssey Marine Exploration, 2015 describing his diving engine: “Necessity is the parent of 1. “Necessity is the invention, and being, in the year 1715, quite reduc’d, and Parent of Invention” having a large family, my thoughts turned upon some ex- In autumn 1744 John Lethbridge was approaching 70 years traordinary method, to retrieve my misfortunes...” of age, and had been diving for shipwreck using his own The “method” fully merited the adjective “extraordi- diving-barrel designs for nearly three decades.
    [Show full text]
  • September 2009 the ACTIVE DIVERS ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER
    Our Web The ctivedivers. www.a org/ Mouthpiece September 2009 THE ACTIVE DIVERS ASSOCIATION NEWSLETTER FREE RAFFLE, FREE BBQ, FREE DIVE !! SUNDAY OCT 11 Who- ADA members and family Where- John Lloyd State Park 1.5 miles north of Sheridan St. on A1A, Dania, Fl. The Jetty pavilion. When- Beach dive at 9 am, raffle and bbq at noon. MUST BE PRESENT TO WIN RAFFLE PRIZES. MUST RSVP TO WIN PRIZES Call Lon, 305 251 4975 deadline Oct 5. More info- For beach diving, bring all your own gear and a dive flag if you have one. The reef is about 100 yds. off shore. The pavilion has covered shelter, very nice bathroom, showers, and changing room. We will have the bbq and raffle rain or shine, unless a hurri- cane threatens. BBQ will include burgers, dogs, chicken, extras and all drinks. September 5 Sat, pm Miami Reef, $49 What a nice way to dive. Local Boat, local reefs, local fish. Great way to spend a Saturday afternoon. 13 Sun. pm Speigal Grove (Advanced).$49 Come explore our local big one. Lots to see and plenty of challenges. See advanced criterion this issue. 20 Sun pm. Islamorada, $49 Just 4 miles past Tavernier, sites may include: Hammerhead, The Canyon, El Infante, Crocker, No Name, The Val- ley Aquarium, Alligator. Average depth 30-40’, visibility 40-50’. Some current, many fish, shallow wrecks. 26 Sat pm. Duanne, adv. $49. BBQ $10 Our favorite Coast Guard Cutter, upright in over 100 feet of blue water. It DOES count even when you don’t touch bottom! OUR LIMIT 100 feet! See advanced criterion this issue.
    [Show full text]