The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (NOAA Ocean Exploration) is the sole office of the United States government tasked with exploring the deep sea. NOAA Ocean Exploration focuses their work on the US Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which extends 200 nautical miles from all US territories, spans over 4 million square miles, and contains remarkable wonders including: new marine species with pharmaceutical potential, sunken treasure, geologic marvels, valuable minerals, and energy resources. Despite its significance to the economy and to scientific discovery, only 39 percent of the US EEZ has been even rudimentarily explored. NOAA Ocean Exploration aims to explore the entirety of the U.S. EEZ greater than 200 meters by 2030, in support of the U.S. National Strategy for Ocean Mapping, Exploration, and Characterization.
As part of NOAA Ocean Exploration’s efforts, the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute (OECI) was formed in 2019 with a mission to explore and map the nation’s vast ocean territory; to develop and implement new technologies; and to engage future generations of ocean scientists, engineers, and stakeholders. OECI is a consortium comprising the University of Rhode Island (URI), University of New Hampshire (UNH), University of Southern Mississippi (USM), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and the non-profit Ocean Exploration Trust (OET). Along with NOAA Ocean Exploration, OECI partner institutions bring deep engineering, scientific, and communications expertise to form a powerful collaboration to advance ocean exploration. The combined talent, concepts and technologies of OECI partners work hand-in-hand with NOAA scientists and administrators to explore the three billion acres of US submerged territory, the “Nation’s Blue Frontier.” Achieving OECI’s vision requires success in three primary themes: Exploration Planning and Execution, Ocean Exploration Technology Advancement, and Increasing Utility of Ocean Exploration Information.
Exploration Planning and Execution
OECI is a vertically-integrated ocean exploration enterprise that encompasses development of new ocean technologies and operational concepts, field testing and refinement of new technologies, and application of new and existing systems and approaches to exploration of the US EEZ. With newly developed and proven technologies, OECI carries out large-scale mapping and exploration campaigns in NOAA priority regions. This work includes using multiple robotic and autonomous assets to expand the richness and range of exploration data that can be routinely acquired. In the coming year, OECI will conduct ocean exploration activities using OET’s E/V Nautilus in the Central Pacific, which hosts nearly half of the U.S. EEZ. Expeditions are planned in unexplored and underexplored areas, including within the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, Palmyra Reef, and at Johnston Atoll. At Johnston Atoll, remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Hercules will be paired with USM’s Eagle Ray autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to simultaneously collect high-resolution seafloor mapping data, co-located seafloor observations, and deep-sea samples that will significantly improve our understanding of this remote corner of the US EEZ. A key element to OECI’s Pacific exploration missions is to enable participation from the public and scientists ashore. Through the URI’s Inner Space Center, video collected by the ROV is broadcast in real-time on nautiluslive.com, which routinely gets millions of views a year, while the OET engagement team conducts interactions with school age children in classrooms across the United States.
Ocean Exploration Technology Advancement
As international leaders in developing and applying advanced robotics, OECI partners expand the agility, breadth, and efficiency of the exploration capabilities of NOAA Ocean Exploration by developing and deploying leading ocean exploration and telepresence technologies, supporting innovations in telepresence, and demonstrating new technologies including: sensing, physical sampling, autonomy, augmented reality, high-throughput communications, and deep in situ observations. In addition, OECI provides state-of-the-art ocean mapping capabilities and innovations in ocean mapping tools, visualization, and techniques. Integrating autonomous exploration vehicles (e.g., powered AUVs/Gliders/Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASV)) into exploration and leveraging advances in navigation, endurance, and artificial intelligence is also a focus for OECI.
Darielle Williams (Tuskegee University) works on USM’s AUV Eagle Ray aboard R/V Point Sur in the Gulf of Mexico. (Image credit: Patrick Flanagan, ISC, OECI)
In September 2021, OECI conducted the first in a series of planned Technology Challenge expeditions. On this expedition, WHOI’s novel midwater AUV Mesobot, with its unique sensor suite and sampling capabilities, operated down to 1,000 meters water depth, where scattering layers of migrating animals reside. Just like midwater organisms, vehicle activity can be triggered by downwelling light levels, and they collect observational data along with filtered seawater samples for eDNA analysis. In the coming months, the AUV Mesobot will operate in concert with UNH’s ASV DriX. The DriX vehicle is an 8 meter-long, highly seaworthy mapping platform, which will also be used as a communications gateway for Mesobot to guide its activities through the onboard bioacoustic sonars for identifying midwater scattering layers.
Increase Utility of Ocean Exploration Information
As exploration activities expand, so too will the volume and types of data collected; OECI aims to match the needs of government and the scientific community by producing findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable data. This work includes developing systems that increase the efficiency of data processing and manipulation through the use of machine learning and cloud-based computing. Additionally, OECI aims to identify new research topics and physical, chemical, and biological patterns and processes that are revealed by exploration data and foster scientific community engagement. In concert, OECI leverages the ocean exploration data, as well as the collection itself to encourage the next generation of ocean explorers, STEM scientists, and Blue Economy workforce professionals. OECI supports and advances NOAA Ocean Exploration’s outreach, education, and public engagement, including communicating outcomes of exploration discoveries and technical innovations across sectors to facilitate transition of exploration results to research, application, and management.
OECI’s multiple educational programs work to broaden participation in ocean exploration and open pathways to marine careers. To encourage the next generation of ocean explorers, scientists, and engineers, OECI’s University of Southern Mississippi and Tuskegee University Internship Program and Bridge to Ocean Exploration Internship Program between the University of Rhode Island and New England Institute of Technology are educating students about ocean exploration and increasing opportunities to participate in ocean exploration activities for individuals from under-represented groups.
Tuskegee University student intern Darielle Williams (center) learns about uncrewed ocean exploration technology aboard an OECI cruise on the R/V Pt. Sur in August, 2021. (Image credit: Rachel Mugge, USM)
Led by NOAA Ocean Exploration, the US is a leader in ocean exploration and in the discovery of the intellectual, economic, and social drivers of the ocean realm. However, leading in this space requires more than any one institution, technological system, or ocean-going platform can provide. Thus, activities of the OECI, whether communicating with students or building robotic tools, are executed collaboratively to ensure that new developments and new exploration maximizes the collective experience and competencies of this partnership and feeds back towards achieving all of OECI’s thematic goals. Through the conduct of its missions, technological innovation, and by mobilizing a vast network of scientists and students, NOAA Ocean Exploration and OECI can mount a sustained and concerted effort with a long-term result of fully opening the US EEZ and widely benefitting the nation’s Blue Economy.
This feature appeared in Environment, Coastal & Offshore (ECO) Magazine's 2021 Winter edition, to read more access the magazine here.
