Harming Marine Life

Recycling: One of the easiest ways to protect the oceans. Did you know that more than 400 leatherback turtles have died since 1885 by swallowing plastic?! That is because of us humans, not caring to recycle. These turtles are already endangered and are still suffering. They have suffered by swallowing plastic bags, fishing lines, balloon fragments, spoons, candy wrappers and more. Did you know that 10% of the world's plastic ends up in our very own oceans? 

It's not only not recycling that's harming the ocean. According to Arthur N. Popper, Ph.D., and Mardi C. Hastings, Ph.D., both college professors, the sounds made by humans exploring the ocean with equipment such as ships, boats, oil exploration equipment, and also things like pile driving and using sonar, could be harming, and possibly killing the marine life in our oceans. Dr. Popper says, "Human generated sounds in the marine environment may result in only small shifts in behavior for some animals, but immediate death in others."

Animals that live in the ocean don't usually have too great of a vision. They use sounds to not only communicate, but see a 3-Dimensional world that extends beyond the visual scene. By causing excess noise and sounds, we might be changing their view of their habitat. Once scientists find a full understanding of what excess noise made by humans is doing to our marine life, they will start thinking of ways to explore more safely.

Canadian Contribution

The Newt Suit.

Canada has invented some interesting technology to help with ocean exploration. I'm sure Canada is very keen on ocean exploration, since we do have the world's longest coastline. One submersible that Canadian engineer Phil Nuytten developed in 1987 is the Newt Suit. It's like a mini submarine that you can wear. This Atmospheric Diving Suit (ADS) is designed to dive deeper for longer but still maintaining the pressure of one atmosphere. Being 112 cm tall, it weighs 4-8 lbs in the water on fly mode, and can dive up to 305 meters. Made from cast aluminium, it has an air supply to last the diver 6-8 hours. But just in case, it's also got an emergency air supply that will last another 48 hours. This suit is great for people who aren't great swimmers because it has fully articulated joints and is built in proportion, meaning that it has thrusters to push it forward, so the operator doesn't have to swim.

Exploration

Out of the whole ocean, there is one place that scientists want to discover dearly: The Mariana's Trench. Being the deepest place in the ocean, it's one of the most mysterious places in the sea. Exploration of this trench started around 1875, by a British ship called the H.M.S Challenger. The scientists on board tried to measure the depth of the trench using a weighted sounding rope. This technology works by having a weight weighing in at about 450 lbs attached to the end of a twine rope. The weight was detachable so that it wouldn't hinder off it's track, and so that the measurements would be more accurate. The made sure to bring around 232 km of rope so they had enough to properly measure and more than 19 km of piano wire for sampling. Down the rope, they marked every 25 fathoms (one fathom equals six feet, or around 2 meters) with flags. Then they lowered they weight in the water and waited for 40 minuets, and when it hit the bottom, they measured 4,475 fathoms (eight kilometers).

But then, in 1951, the British ship, the H.M.S. Challenger II returned to the same spot with an echo-sounder. Echo-sounding is done by using the sonar method. This method is done by sending sound waves into the  ocean and recording how much time it takes for the sound to bounce off the sea floor and return to the boat as an echo. There is a sound source on the ship that sends the sound and a receiver that receives it. Sound waves travel at around 1,500 meters per second in the ocean water, so you then take how many seconds it takes to travel from the boat, down to the floor, and back, and multiply it by 1,500. But, since the total time is how long it takes to get to the floor, and back, you have to divide that number in half. That's your total depth. The ship travels in a line to cover an area.The crew of  the H.M.S. Challenger did this and found that  it took 7.3 seconds one way, so the deepest point was 11,000 meters, or 11 km.

In 1960, Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh were the first humans to dive to the Challenger Deep. They dove down in a bathyscaphe called the Trieste, a self-propelled vehicle that can dive deeper than a submarine. It's float has air tanks and gas tanks which allow the vehicle to propel and maneuver itself, and also move up and down. 

The Triest on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Navy.

The two scientists went down for a scarce 20 minutes compared to a 5 hour descent. They couldn't take any pictures because the water was very murky and hard to see through. But, the flash light of the Trieste flashed over what Piccard thought to have been a flatfish, and he got very excited. He wrote in his journal, "Here, in an instant, was the answer that biologists had asked for decades: Could life exist in the greatest depths of the ocean? It could!"

The most recent expedition to the great depths of the Mariana Trench was done by James Cameron, a national geographic explorer. On March 26, 2012, he made a descent all the way down to the Challenger Deep in the Deepsea Challenger, a 24 foot long craft made of highly specialized glass foam. But out of all this room inside the submersible, he was inside a tiny pilot sphere. It is so small, it has a diameter of 43 inches, and with all of the equipment needed to survive and explore in this environment, the Cameron's legs were tightly bent, and he could barely move his arms. 

The hull is made of 6.4 centimeter thick steel, designed to withstand the pressures of the deep sea. There are also layers foam that allow it to float it's way back to the surface. And on the inside of this ball, it has all the equipment needed to explore and survive this environment. First of all, there are joysticks to control the thrusters and move the vehicle horizontally and vertically. It has emergency batteries located underneath the pilot's seat, and on the right of the pilot are tanks that absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen. To the pilot's left is an array of controls and buttons that control everything from power to communications. There is also a screen in front of the pilot that show him the surroundings captured by a  Red Epic 5K camera, giving the pilot a wide-angle view, much better than what he can see out of the tiny window he has. There is also a touch screen controlling everything from battery power to oxygen levels, food, and water.

Survival is a big part of exploration, as anyone would think. The engineers who built it (including James Cameron himself) had to study Cameron's exact needs to build this sphere. The oxygen tanks contain enough oxygen to keep the pilot breathing for 56 hours. The sphere even makes use of water vapour that the pilot breathes out. When the pilot breathes out carbon dioxide, the tanks absorb it. The water vapour that he breathes out and the sweat he produces condensed on the sides of the sphere trickle down the side and collect in a bag so that if the pilot needs emergency water, he can drink that.

The pilot's clothes and the tape used inside the sphere are fire-proof. He also has a change of clothes, a vacuum packed electronically heated suit, plus a sleeping bag and even more layers to keep him warm. Sitting at the bottom of the Mariana's Trench can be a very cold experience, as the temperatures drop below freezing.   

Canadian Oceans

Even though the Mariana's Trench is not in and no where near Canada, we still have ocean environments of our own. In fact, Canada has the world's longest coastline. It borders the Pacific in the west, Atlantic in the east, and Arctic oceans in the north.

I think that the Arctic ocean, though not as deep as the Mariana's Trench, is still similar in a way. Since the Arctic air is so cold, the water tends to be cold as well, so the under the usual over-top ice covering, there are oxygen-rich waters, kind of like the Mariana's Trench (besides the ice covering). 

The oceans are an environment that haven't been explored too well. They are the least explored environments on this planet! Did you know that space has been explored more than our very own oceans? That's very shocking! For an environment that covers roughly 70% of the Earth's surface, we need to explore it more.  Time is short. There is global warming, oil spills, etc. that are happening. When need to fully explore this environment before there is no time left. There are estimates made that still 95% of the world's ocean and 99% percent of the ocean floor have yet to be explored.

The oceans hold many clues to earth's history and process. The oceans have led to the discovery of continental drift, chemosynthesis, and that the Black Sea was once a fresh-water lake.

The Mariana's Trench: An Extreme Environment

Everyone knows the Mariana's Trench as just some big hole in the ocean. But does anyone know how these "holes" are formed? Well, when there are two tectonic plates in the earth that collide, one of the plates slips under the other one, creating a trench in between them.

The Mariana's Trench is a place that is deep, dark, and cold. As you get deeper, the same in any ocean habitat, it gets colder and colder. At around  1 km deep, the temperature is approximately 4 degrees Celsius. That's the temperature that snow falls at! As you go deeper and deeper, all the way down to the Challenger Deep, goes below 0 degrees Celsius! It is so cold because cold water, like cold air, is less dense than warm water, or warm air. Therefore, the cold, salty water is heavier and it sinks to the bottom of the sea. This causes the surface water to be warmest, and the deeper you go, the colder it gets. This one condition that makes it difficult to survive. Also, the ocean gets darker the deeper you go too, for obvious reasons. Since the sun is what lights up the earth, and there's no sunlight at the bottom of the ocean, there is no light in general. Except for little bio-luminescent animals that float around, displaying a light show of beauty. This is another reason it is difficult to survive in the ocean. But some animals, like the sea cucumber and the snail fish, have adapted to this harsh cold and light-less environment.

Water pressure is like a silent killer. The amount of water above you in the Challenger Deep is an amount of unimaginable pressure. Air pockets, such as in fish swim bladders, can be crushed by that much pressure. There are some fish, though, that their swim bladders are designed to withstand such high pressure, that when brought to the surface, their swim bladders expand so much that they could die. This extreme condition has been adapted to by many animals in the trench, and all over the deep sea.

When most people think ocean, they think "no oxygen". But that's not necessarily true. In fact, the deeper oceans all over the world have an appropriate amount of oxygen in them. This is because cold waters can dissolve more oxygen than warm waters. There are some places where the waters full of oxygen cool off so much that they sink to the sea floor. But this is one of those conditions that is unbearable for us humans. That much oxygen is impossible for us to survive in with out any special equipment.

“Worry is a good thing when you’re an explorer. It’s when you’re cavalier, when you take risk for granted, that’s when you’re gonna get bit.” —James Cameron. I couldn't have said it better myself. The main risk for exploring the Mariana Trench or any ocean, is the risk of dying. With so many different ways to die, of course there's a risk! You could die from getting squashed by water pressure if your sphere unbuckles suddenly. Or, you could freeze to death if your stuck at the bottom and the weights don't drop.