For the team aboard the Okeanos Explorer, exploring the mounds and craters of the sea floor along Alaska's Aleutian Islands is a chance to surface new knowledge about life in some of the world’s deepest and most remote waters.
Shannon Hoy, an expedition coordinator, stands in front of control room screens inside the NOAA Okeanos Explorer, Friday, June 23, 2023, in Kodiak, Alaska. The ship, a reconfigured former U.S. Navy vessel run by civilians and members of the NOAA Corps, is specially outfitted with technology and tools needed to access deep into the ocean, and to share that data with the public and on-shore researchers in real-time.
“It’s so exciting to go down there and see that it’s actually teeming with life,” said expedition coordinator Shannon Hoy. “You would never know that unless we were able to go down there and explore.” Many factors, such as depth, speed and sonar capability, influence how much sea floor can be mapped. In 2 to 4 weeks, the Okeanos Explorer can map as much as 50,000 square kilometers , Hoy said.
Kasey Cantwell, the ship’s operations chief, said the data will help researchers and the public better understand these remote stretches of ocean, including marine life and habitats in the area. That could inform management decisions in fisheries. Data could also help detect hazards and improve nautical charts.
Closing these gaps is a mission priority, and will help meet a goal of mapping all of the United States’ deep waters by 2030 and near-shore waters by 2040, according to Emily Crum, a communications specialist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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