Sea Floor - Surface - Satellite - Shore

slambo writes: "Wondering how research is conducted on the ocean floor? One of the methods, as described by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is to put sensors on the sea floor that transmit the data through a cable to a buoy that then bounces the data through a satellite to the land station. They have an overview on their website. The main advantage of this setup is near real-time monitoring of activities on the sea floor."

Comments

Personal experience

[drin]

Having worked in Woods Hole for three years, I can tell you that it isn't NEARLY as cool as it sounds from the web pages. The system is working, and the buoy farm offshore makes for a highly effective testbed, but the complications associated with satellite delivery of data from floating buoys make the data connections tenuous at best, and horrible at worst. Ever try to deliver data to a satellite from a floating ocean buoy when it's raining? Don't bother.....

Yeah, because so much stuff happens there...

[Greyfox]

Like... um... little crabbies walking along? Now we'll um... know when those crabbies move 3 feet to the left! Imagine the advancement of science! And... um... we could incorporate the star wars defense system to ah... catch lobsters! Yeah! Why, there hasn't been such a huge advance in lobster catching technology since the lobster cage!

We're going to need deep sea technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I think that we're not spending enough on things like this, because at the rate that America and the rest of the first world is using up natural resources and producing pollution soon the only place left with any kind of survival and resource potential is going to be on the ocean floor near hydrothermal vents where we can life alongside the bacteria and algae.

But apart from that this is pretty interesting, and a much better use of our scientific resources than YADMP (Yet Another Doomed Mars Probe). It makes more sense to understand our own planet before we go haring off into outer space, because despite what techno-fetishists tell you, space is no solution to any of our problems, whereas the sea is a resource we haven't really begun to tap.

Re:We're going to need deep sea technology

[King Louie]

The problem is, the deep ocean presents more difficult problems than the vacuum of space. Among them:

Pressure. On the surface of the Earth, it is about 15 psi. Going into orbit requires a pressure vessel that doesn't need to maintain a differential any more than that (15psi vs 0 psi). In the water, pressure increases by 1 atmosphere for every 33 feet of depth. Since the average depth of the ocean is 4,000 meters, any sub-surface vehicle suited for deep-sea research must maintain a pressure differential on the order of 5500 psi at 4,000 meters. That is one heck of an engineering problem.

Coming home. For space exploration, we have largely solved the problem of re-entry into the atmosphere. But the same pressure differentials mentioned above present problems returning to the surface from the deep ocean. If subjected to more than 3 atmospheres of pressure, humans are limited in the amount of time they can spend in that environment before requiring decompression. In addition, submarines can only ascend or descend so fast before the rate of change of pressure begins having adverse effects on the vehicle. In submarines, pressure vessel failures tend to be catastrophic and fatal (ever hear of USS Thresher?).

There are other problems, but those are two of the biggest. Solving them requires a lot of money, time, and energy (undersea propulsion being another big challenge). It's not as easy as it first seems.

Like dumping nuclear waste into subduction zones.

[SlushDot]

Oceanic subduction zones are locations on the Earth where one crustal plate is being force under another and back into the Earth's mantle. This is a perfect place to dump nuclear waste. It would be (1) safe, (2) not contaminate water tables, (3) not leave problems for future generations to deal with.

Now before anyone misinterprets my words to mean "ocean dumping of nuclear waste" or says something nonsensical like "what if it 'comes up' in a volcano somewhere else", recall that ALL of the Earth's current internal heat is generated by the natural radioactive elements present in the Earth (see: http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/env99/env087 .htm).

And since most radioactive elements are heavy, they tend to sink and not come back up. Those that do reemerge to the surface are diffused across the globe and are indistinguishable from natural radioactivity.

Support subduction zone dumping of nuclear waste now! Write your legislators! Get funding allocated to research this at your local University. It *is* a good idea. And far better than anything else yet conceived of what to do with the waste.

"Why not just quit making the waste? You overlook world energy shortages."

Subset of returned data

[Trinition]

I managed to get ahold of some of the data retruned by these probes, by using my modified DSS dish. What does it all mean?

DSFP (Deap Sea Floor Probe) #223-K

Summary of data for 1/10/1901
Humidity: %100 +/- 0%
Light: 0 Lumens +/- 0 Lumens
Pressure: OVERFLOW
Temperature: 0.56 C