A precocious child at the age of, let's say, ten has his or her first encounter with the wonders of the sea, perhaps at a local aquarium; or a vacation at the beach, wandering about the tidepools; or simply by watching an underwater wildlife documentary. Suddenly a spark is ignited and a future marine scientist and explorer is born.
That spark becomes a fire that continues to burn to adulthood and now the freshly-minted ocean explorer enters the world of academia or corporate research in search of a living. And that's when things can change. The bureaucracy and politics of these new working environments - where papers must be regularly written, departments must have their spotlight of attention, or private companies must meet a corporate agenda - take the budding scientist further and further away from that original inspiration, that sense of pure research and exploration.
The Undersea Voyager Project (UVP), headed by Scott Cassell, has a mission to bring that original sense of exploration back to the marine scientist. Providing submersible platforms for research and study, UVP has a long-term goal of circumnavigating the world through the ocean's most vibrant depths, from near surface to 1,000 feet. It's an alternative approach in that scientists can make use of UVP with one caveat: the resulting data is open for the world to benefit from. Institutions may be reluctant to get on board with such a heretic approach, but scientists from a wide variety of marine fields have expressed interest; an interest to reconnect with that first motivating spark once again.
Through the month of October, the Undersea Voyager Project is operating at Catalina Island in Southern California. Working with the Antipodes, a five-passenger submersible owned by Seattle-based Oceangate, Cassell has been plumbing the depths of this local California island attraction, discovering wreckage from Cold War era listening stations to evidence of never-before-seen underwater landslides.
I had the opportunity to join the UVP and Oceangate team this past weekend to film the Antipodes underwater as it ran through some checkout dives and will be joining them again shortly to film Scott for a German television program and take more promotional video. There is a list of scientists and educators that plan to participate while the Antipodes is available through this month, hoping to discover what secrets might be lying just a few hundred feet below in the waters off bustling Southern California.
There are discoveries waiting to be made and secrets to be uncovered. But maybe the greatest discovery or secret is the moment when a researcher can once again connect with those youthful impulses that drove him or her to be an ocean explorer in the first place.
Visit the Undersea Voyager Project website. Visit the Oceangate website.
To make it quick and easy, Budd and I took the fast Catalina Express boat to the main island city of Avalon to dive at the popular Underwater Park at the city's famous Casino Point. With the park being a great place to conduct scuba diving classes, the sea wall at the point is typically lined with dive bags and assorted gear - and this day was no exception. It was crawling with divers.
But the Underwater Park seems to handle the diver pressure pretty well. It's a protected zone; you can't remove anything from the water except trash, no souvenir empty shells, no rocks, nothing. And because there is no fishing or hunting of any kind, it becomes a sort of refuge for many fish. Large calico bass will hang out in the flowing kelp and California sheephead will cruise by, seemingly aware that they are free from harm within the park's borders.
From above, we noticed that the visibility looked clear and promising, with a slight current moving through and bending the long stalks of kelp over to one side. Upon entering the water, our surface observation was confirmed: exceptional visibility for this location with an almost uncharacteristic blue tint to the water.
As we settled to the bottom, we were greeted by a large school of young mackeral. When they amass along the rocky shoreline, it's quite a sight to see. You have probably seen pictures or films of large schools of anchovies or other fish, congregating in immense balls. Well, for these mackeral, they instead form an undulating mass that weaves its way around the rocks and kelp like some elaborate network of aquatic highways with various underpasses, overpasses, turnoffs and junctions. Thousands of fish emulating California rush hour traffic (and when the current picks up, they come to a stop, hovering - just like our daily battle with gridlock!).
It's believed that a fish's lateral line - a sensory organ along the length of its body that can detect changes in water pressure - is what enables fish to maintain spacing and move en masse in schools. Each fish, when swimming, produces a pressure wave that the surrounding fish can sense and with that a collective sense of order and movement is established.
The mackeral continued to entertain us and gave us plenty of subject matter to film or photograph. They would double back, seeming to enjoy the security of the Underwater Park and only occasionally spreading out in large circles to give a possible hungry Calico Bass a wide berth, or darting about suddenly when a sea lion would make a quick pass.
Just an overall great day at one of Southern California's ocean treasures: a simple, little underwater oasis, able to withstand man's curiosity. Hopefully, with each new diver that completes their training at Catalina's Underwater Park, a conscientious ocean conservationist is born.
Interesting artice in today's Los Angeles Times: In 2006, a fishing trawler sank off the southwestern tip of Catalina Island - one of the Channel Islands situated about 25 miles off the coast of Los Angeles/Long Beach. Sitting upright on the bottom, its haul of fishing net drapes over the ship like a billowing circus tent and has been responsible for the death of endless numbers of marine life, ranging from small fish to seal lions, dolphins and sharks. The sandy bottom around the base of the wreck is littered with the bones and skulls of many of the net's victims.
In come the Ocean Defenders Alliance, a Huntington Beach, CA-based non-profit committed to protecting offshore reefs and seabeds from dangerous man-made objects, particularly fishing nets which, when torn or lost at sea, often pose an ongoing hazard to marine life - as in the case of the sunken trawler at Catalina.
This past weekend, volunteer divers working with the Ocean Defenders Alliance made a series of deep dives, breathing a Nitrox blend to limit the possibility of decompression sickness, to cut away the derelict netting and haul it to the surface - not an easy task due to the depth, limited visibility, and shear bulk of the fishing net. As much as 800 square feet of netting was recovered, but organizers believe it will take many more dives to retrieve it all.
Congratulations to the Ocean Defenders Alliance for taking this proactive step regarding abandoned, derelict fishing nets - a worldwide problem that contributes to the death of many tens of thousands of marine animals. (Read entire L.A. Times article.)
A precocious child at the age of, let's say, ten has his or her first encounter with the wonders of the sea, perhaps at a local aquarium; or a vacation at the beach, wandering about the tidepools; or simply by watching an underwater wildlife documentary. Suddenly a spark is ignited and a future marine scientist and explorer is born.
The Undersea Voyager Project (UVP), headed by Scott Cassell, has a mission to bring that original sense of exploration back to the marine scientist. Providing submersible platforms for research and study, UVP has a long-term goal of circumnavigating the world through the ocean's most vibrant depths, from near surface to 1,000 feet. It's an alternative approach in that scientists can make use of UVP with one caveat: the resulting data is open for the world to benefit from. Institutions may be reluctant to get on board with such a heretic approach, but scientists from a wide variety of marine fields have expressed interest; an interest to reconnect with that first motivating spark once again.
