“The game changer will be uncrewed technology, where you can operate a vessel almost 24/7, without any people on board.” RoboSea’s Robo-Shark, a multi-joint bionic robot fish for underwater exploration, is displayed during the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, Janu AI is ‘the future’ “It’s a slow, slow process”, said McMichael-Phillips. Fully crewed ships need to sail across the world and use their sonar to scan the ocean floor. What is challenging about the process is that it is slow and time-consuming. “We need this information to better understand climate change and issues of biodiversity.” “There are a range of ocean processes that depend on the shape of the ocean floor,” said McMichael-Phillips. Seabed 2030 turns data like this into a map and makes it public. With this technology, a surface vessel can roughly map even the deepest points of the ocean. It uses sound waves to determine what is under water and what the seabed looks like. Sonar is an old technology, first invented in the 1910s. Besides that, it tries to convince other ships to use their sonar systems to map the seafloor and share that data with them. It scours archives of governments, research institutes and companies looking for seabed maps that haven’t been published yet. Seabed 2030 doesn’t usually do this mapping itself.
Nevertheless, there’s still a long way to go,” said Jamie McMichael-Phillips, director of Seabed 2030, an initiative that aims to map the entire seabed by 2030. “So, the last few years we have seen a huge acceleration. Still, that too represents a major shift: By 2017, only 6 percent of the ocean floor had been charted. While decades of scientific and technological advances have allowed humans to send exploratory missions to distant planets, only about 25 percent of the Earth’s ocean floors have been mapped to date. OceanGate owned and operated the Titan submersible that imploded in June 2023 Unmapped depths A view of OceanGate equipment within the boatyard near the headquarters at the Port of Everett complex in Everett, Washington, US, June 22, 2023. Before we accomplish that, though, some technological hurdles still remain. However, small submersibles, often uncrewed and driven by artificial intelligence (AI), might be the future, using novel technology to recharge under water and operate for months – even years – on end. The short answer: Underwater exploration will most likely continue, even after the Titan debacle. Is it too dangerous to explore these depths? Where does the technology stand? And what’s next for submersibles? China is building an icebreaker with a submersible that aims to reach and explore the Arctic seabed. India, which in August became the first nation to land a spacecraft near the moon’s South Pole, has announced a mission called Samudrayaan – sea vehicle in Sanskrit – for a submersible with three people to travel to a depth of 6,000 metres by 2026. Norway’s government wants to open up an area of the ocean floor larger than Germany for mining. And a race to the deep sea is on, with companies and countries eyeing resource deposits on the seabed to mine, even as environmentalists have warned of damage to vulnerable ocean ecosystems.
The ocean bed is also home to battery metals such as cobalt, copper and manganese which are critical for the planet’s clean energy transition. New animal and plant species are also constantly being discovered in the great deep. The oceans interact heavily with the earth’s climate and understanding them better could offer potential solutions to climate change. Still, that little-known world is crucial for the future of the planet. The light doesn’t penetrate to such depths. Keep reading list of 4 items list 1 of 4 NASA set to deliver biggest asteroid sample yet: What you need to know list 2 of 4 Russian Soyuz with 2 cosmonauts, US astronaut docks at Int’l Space Station list 3 of 4 China sees ‘Cold War mentality’ in US-Vietnam pact, Vietnamese disagree list 4 of 4 NASA appoints director to lead UFO research, urges science-based approach end of list
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