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How Do Scientists Explore a Place Humans Can't Survive? · How To Protect The Ocean

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  Imagine trying to explore Mount Everest without even setting foot on the mountain.
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  That's essentially what ocean scientists do every time they study the deep sea.
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  The only difference?
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  Instead of climbing nearly nine kilometers up, they're exploring thousands of
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  meters down into a place where a human couldn't survive more than a few moments.
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  Probably less than that, if you really think about it.
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  This is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, your weekday ocean news update.
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  If you care about staying informed on the ocean every single weekday, Monday
• 0:28
  to Friday, hit that follow button right now so you don't miss tomorrow's story.
• 0:32
  And if you wanna support the show because you love all the stuff that
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  I do on this podcast, on YouTube, on Instagram, on TikTok, and on
• 0:39
  Facebook, of course, you can do so by going to speakupforblue.com/patreon.
• 0:43
  That's speakupforblue.com/patreon.
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  Welcome to part three of our four-part series leading up to Friday's
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  interview with DFO scientist and an Ocean Networks Canada educator,
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  all on exploring Canada's deep sea.
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  On Monday, we learned that we've only explored a small fraction of the deep sea.
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  Yesterday, we discovered that the mysterious world is actually
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  filled with incredible marine life.
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  Today we're answering perhaps the biggest question yet.
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  How in the heck do scientists actually explore a place
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  humans can't even safely visit?
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  The answer is one of the greatest technological success stories
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  you've probably never heard about.
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  Let's be honest.
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  Humans weren't built for the deep sea ocean at all.
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  By the time you reach 1,000 meters below the surface, the pressure
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  is around 100 times greater than that you're experiencing right now.
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  So you go deeper, and that pressure continues to increase.
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  At the deepest part of the ocean, it's enough to crush an ordinary
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  submarine like an empty soda can.
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  It's completely dark.
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  The water hovers just above freezing.
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  There's no GPS.
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  Radio signals don't work underwater.
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  Even communicating with equipment becomes incredibly difficult.
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  So instead of sending people, scientists send robots.
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  The workhorse of deep sea exploration is something called an ROV.
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  That stands for remotely operated vehicle.
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  Think of it as an underwater robot that's connected to a ship
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  on the surface by a long cable.
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  Operators on board use joysticks, cameras, and sensors to guide
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  the vehicle across the sea floor.
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  Modern ROVs aren't just cameras, they're floating laboratories.
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  They can collect rocks, take water samples, measure temperature,
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  capture high-definition video, pick up delicate corals, even retrieve
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  tiny animals for scientific study.
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  It's like having a marine biologist, a geologist, a photographer, and
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  a robotic engineer all working together through one machine.
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  And because they're operated from the ship, scientists can spend hours exploring
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  places no diver could ever reach.
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  Even if you dive at 100 feet.
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  I go diving at 100 feet often.
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  I'm not a big fan of it because it's really deep.
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  I don't love it to be that deep.
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  But what I do when I've gone down there, I spend like maybe
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  15 minutes at the bottom time.
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  Imagine being able to spend hours looking through a monitor and seeing
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  all this wonderful, amazing stuff.
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  In fact, if you've even seen any of the deep sea stuff that Schmidt Ocean
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  Institute has put out, or Monterey Bay has put out, or even Ocean Networks
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  Canada put out, they have amazing footage of the deep sea that you
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  could even see from any social media.
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  If you've ever go on any of their social media, you get to see that
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  stuff, and it's absolutely amazing.
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  Now, before an ROV ever enters the water, scientists need to know where to send it.
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  That's where another incredible technology comes in, the multi-beam sonar.
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  I have to admit, I always wanted a multi-beam sonar.
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  It's a weird thing, I know.
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  I've always wanted one, though.
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  I've always wanted one to put on my boat.
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  Did I say I wanted a boat as well?
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  I always wanted one to put on my boat.
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  In fact, when I did my master's, I was doing my GIS analyst diploma at
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  the same time at COGS, the Centre of Geographic Science in Nova
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  Scotia, it was a great program.
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  But I remember driving an hour and a half each way to school and back to my home
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  in Halifax, and I would pick up some people on the way and bring some people
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  home on the weekend and stuff like that.
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  And I had a friend, Chris, and we actually discussed starting a
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  multi-beam sonar company at one point.
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  We were gonna buy multi-beam sonars, we were gonna have a boat, we were gonna
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  do all this mapping of the ocean, of the deep sea, and everything like that.
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  Never happened, of course, but multi-beam sonars are amazing.
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  Instead of using light, ships send sound waves towards the sea floor.
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  Those sound waves bounce back, allowing computers to create detailed
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  maps of underwater landscapes.
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  So imagine mowing your lawn.
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  You don't just walk randomly.
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  You move back and forth in organized lines until you've covered every single section.
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  Ocean mapping works much the same way.
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  Research vessels carefully track back and forth across the ocean,
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  collecting millions of sound measurements as they go along.
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  Now, if you picture it like a lawn, like mowing your lawn, for me, I
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  go back and forth, back and forth to make sure I don't miss anything.
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  It takes me a little bit longer, but I do that.
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  But a lot of times if you're just going forward, you're going one
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  track, you go around another track.
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  But the lines are incredibly thin 'cause the multi-beam
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  only goes a certain range down.
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  So as it comes down, it's like a cone shape from the bottom of the boat all
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  the way down to the surface of the ocean.
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  You get this cone shape, and it only covers a certain swath.
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  So the lines are gonna try and overlap that swath to make sure you get all
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  the data in this specific section.
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  You're not able to do a lot depending on the swath.
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  So you're not covering a lot of area, but it is kind of interesting, in that way.
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  But eventually, like, the measurements become detailed maps, and scientists
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  can identify underwater mountains called seamounts, which are really cool.
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  They're deep canyons, steep cliffs, ancient landslides, potential coral
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  habitats, places where currents bring nutrients that attract marine life.
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  And those maps become the guidebook for future exploration.
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  And to be honest, if you wanna really look for exploration, there's an
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  organization called Map the Gaps.
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  It's a client of ours at piscesoceans.ca if you wanna go to our website.
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  But Map the Gaps is an organization.
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  I'll put the link in the show notes.
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  It's an organization that's out to map the bottom of the ocean, and actually
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  has a really cool plan where you can basically purchase a hex to get it
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  actually mapped out, and they'll go out and map it out and stuff like that.
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  It's really kind of a cool program.
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  Check it out, Map the Gaps.
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  I'm gonna put the link in the show notes so you can check
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  that out, but it's pretty cool.
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  Now here's the exciting part.
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  Every new map often revealed something nobody expected: a ridge
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  that wasn't there before, a canyon that was much deeper than scientists
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  had thought, or a habitat that deserves a bit of a closer look.
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  Sometimes the map itself becomes the discovery.
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  And that's a really kind of a cool thing, 'cause you've probably discovered this
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  podcast just by searching out ocean.
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  You're trying to search a keyword.
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  Imagine doing it using a multi-beam sonar and being able to discover something
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  that's really cool, like a seamount.
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  A seamount is basically these mountains, right?
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  Mountains that are in the ocean, and they have incredible biodiversity
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  at the top of that seamount.
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  And so it's a really cool thing.
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  But it's a very unique thing that people, when they pass by, they kinda discover.
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  Just like you were probably searching for something in the ocean, and you
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  passed by and you got to my podcast about how to protect the ocean.
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  You're like, "I need to check this out." And now you're addicted
• 6:38
  because this is such great material.
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  But if you've just discovered this and you wanna come back to it, and
• 6:42
  you may not remember the name or whatever that might be, hit the follow
• 6:45
  button so you don't miss any other episode, and you can always get this
• 6:49
  rich, rich information, biodiverse information, or diverse information.
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  Not biodiverse, I guess, but it's diverse for sure.
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  We definitely cover a lot of things on ocean conservation.
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  But the technology in the deep sea ocean keeps getting better.
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  Scientists are now combining underwater robots with artificial intelligence, AI,
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  to analyze thousands of hours of video.
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  So think about this, like, if you think about the effort that it takes to go on
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  out on a boat, gather all the data, and then be able to bring all that back.
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  Even Ocean Networks Canada, the amount of data that they pump
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  through, it's, like, by the minute.
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  They can even do it by the second if they really wanted to.
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  That all has to be analyzed because you can't understand the ocean without
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  analyzing the data that you actually spent millions upon millions upon
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  millions of dollars to gather, right?
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  To collect.
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  So you gotta use AI and machine learning to actually process the data.
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  And that's gonna become a bigger and bigger part of actually
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  understanding what data's coming in and really identifying trends.
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  So instead of watching every minute of a video themselves, the AI can help
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  identify corals, sponges, fish, and other animals much more quickly.
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  Researchers are also using DNA, environmental DNA to be
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  specific, what we call eDNA.
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  Every animal leaves tiny traces of their genetic material in the water.
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  By collecting the seawater, scientists can often determine which species
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  are nearby without even seeing them.
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  Now, it does require that we have a genetic makeup of that species.
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  So species that we haven't discovered yet, we may have that eDNA in
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  there, but we just don't know what that DNA is or who it belongs to.
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  So until we start discovering species and get that makeup of that genome,
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  we won't really know new species in there 'cause we don't have their DNA.
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  As we get better in that respect, we'll get more and more of that DNA,
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  and we'll be able to identify it.
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  It's a little like walking into a room after someone has left and still
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  being able to tell that who was there.
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  Like a smell, I guess, in a way.
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  Sometimes that's good, sometimes it's not so good when, when you're walking
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  in a room and you hear, and you smell something that you know that person wears.
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  That smell of a cologne of some sort or a natural smell or whatever.
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  Sometimes it's not that great.
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  It's BO, but we're not gonna get into that because that's gross and
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  we're not gonna talk about that.
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  But autonomous underwater vehicles, we are gonna talk about, or AUVs,
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  they take exploration even further.
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  So unlike ROVs, they don't need a cable to connect them to a ship.
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  They're programmed with a mission, they're like an underwater drone, and explore
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  on their own before returning the data.
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  So when you put all these technologies together, something remarkable happens.
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  We begin to see ocean in ways that simply weren't possible 20 years ago.
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  Scientists can explore deeper, stay underwater longer, collect more
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  information, and answer bigger questions.
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  But here's what I find the most inspiring.
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  Technology doesn't replace the scientists.
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  It gives scientists just better tools to ask better questions.
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  Every piece of data still needs a scientist to interpret it.
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  And every video still needs someone to notice something unusual, because AI and
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  machine learning and all that can still miss something that the naked eye can see.
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  Every discovery begins with curiosity.
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  And that's exactly what you're gonna hear about in Friday's interview, because
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  we're gonna be feeding people's curiosity by talking about this educational
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  project where these researchers, using these incredible technologies can
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  answer questions about Canada's deep Pacific Ocean and then share that live
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  sometimes as they're doing these deep sea exploration surveys with people watching
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  it live, like students and so forth.
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  Now tomorrow we're gonna finish up our series, our four-part
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  series, by looking at perhaps the most important question of all.
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  Why does exploration matter?
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  We spend the time, the money, the effort exploring places
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  most people will never visit.
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  Because exploration isn't the goal.
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  Protection is.
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  And understanding is.
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  That's why we protect it.
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  And that's where the story becomes even more important.
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  The deep sea is too extreme for humans to explore directly, but technology is
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  allowing us to discover new ecosystems and understanding our planet in ways that
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  weren't possible just a generation ago.
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  It's an incredible time to be a scientist.
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  It's an incredible time to be an engineer.
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  It's an incredible time to be curious about the ocean 'cause we're actually
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  able to see, just regular people, not scientists, just people that are
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  going, minding their own business, you can actually see what's in the
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  deep sea by going on Ocean Networks Canada and looking at their live feeds.
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  You can go on Smith Ocean Institute on their live feeds or their videos that
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  they have from their deep sea exploration.
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  There are so many videos being shared, it's actually quite incredible.
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  Some of the videos that we've been able to see have been able to point
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  out and get, sometimes for the first time, deep sea squid, giant squid on
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  camera, which is absolutely incredible, and we continue to find more and more
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  things as we continue to explore.
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  By using these amazing technologies that cost money and, had to go through a
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  lot of trial and error to get into the deep sea and be able to do what they do
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  right, just as what we talked about today.
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  And I'm so excited that I was able to bring that to you.
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  But I would love to hear what you think.
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  Hit me up on Instagram or on TikTok in my DMs.
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  Let me know how you feel about these episodes and what you're learning.
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  I always like to know what you'd wanna learn as well.
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  You can hit me up on those DMs or on the social platforms by going
• 11:45
  to the show notes, where I'm also gonna put in Map the Gap's website.
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  And of course, if you would like to support the show, you can go
• 11:50
  to speakupforblue.com/patreon.
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  Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How
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  to Protect the Ocean podcast.
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  I am your host, Andrew Lewin.
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  Have a great day.
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  We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.