Jackie Peterson, B&W Staff
The ocean has been a point of interest in science for as long as I can remember, but an interest in exploring the deep sea really arose after a Malaysian Airlines flight got lost somewhere in the depths.
Sure, space is the final frontier (insert corny Star Trek joke here), but I feel like we should talk about the oceans first. We’ve barely explored any of it, and it’s fascinating. Plus, it’s a huge part of our planet, and we should probably finish one thing before going onto another — don’t get me wrong though, I’m just as psyched as anyone that Pluto is a planet again.
Let’s dive right in. According to marinebio.org, around 50-80 percent of life is found under the sea (cue Disney song). We’ve explored under 10 percent of the ocean’s depths, but we’ve classified around 1.5 million species. There was also a paragraph saying that some fish can apparently change their sex throughout their lives, and others have both female and male sex organs. That last one’s important.
I’m just kidding, the last fact isn’t important. Back to the big picture.
As much as I love talking about the ridiculous amounts of animals found in the ocean, especially the gruesome ones, it might be something as small as a sea monkey that’s really the MVP. According to foxnews.com (and a variety of other sources, hold onto your pants), sea monkeys, which are actually a type of shrimp, might contribute to the sea’s currents as much as the wind and tides. They might not look like much, but together they swarm up to the surface to feed at night and down to the depths to escape predators in the morning, and the swarm may contribute about a terawatt (a trillion watts) of power to the surrounding water. This discovery sheds more light on the dark, deep oceans.
Our lack of knowledge on the oceans goes all the way back to Earth’s beginnings — we don’t really know how the oceans formed. However, according to newscientist.com, we may have just found a large puzzle piece. A reservoir of water three times the size of our oceans has been found under the Earth’s surface. The water is under a layer of blue rock called ringwoodlite, 700 meters under the mantle. This discovery could explain the oceans in a way we had never thought of before. Many geologists had thought that water came to Earth via comets hitting its surface. However, now there is a wide belief that water oozed out of Earth’s own core. It could also have acted as a buffer, making sure the water levels stayed approximately the same all of these millions of years.
Another step forward comes from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where a new map of our ocean’s floors has been released. The new map is twice as accurate as the one the Navy released 20 years ago and used data pulled from previously released satellites as well as the topography of the ocean to create the finished product. “But now that seems sort of strange that you would map the topography on the ocean surface where you really want to get at the sea floor,” said Scripps geophysics professor David Sandwell to voanews.com via Skype, “But the ocean surface topography has these bumps and dips due to gravitational effects that mimic what’s on the sea floor.”
This new map has already revealed much to UCSD scientists. It very obviously outlines ranges of mountains, dormant volcanoes buried by sediment and even distinct lines of disturbance where the continents pulled away from each other, very brightly illustrating plate tectonics. This map will improve not only our understanding of our oceans, but the estimates of ocean depths for safe navigation, military operations and worldwide science missions.
Our oceans are a huge part of our planet, and it’s good that we’re taking the time to explore them as deeply as we can. They provide us with so much, from iridescent clams inspiring new types of solar power to letting us study the beginnings of evolutionary theory. They give way to amazing discoveries, house animals as old as the dinosaurs and are home to countless myths and old wives’ tales. Space might be the final frontier, but our oceans, shrouded in mystery, should keep us occupied for a while.
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