Exploring the Depths of Our Ocean: A History of Marine Life Discovery and Research Vessels

Life in the Deep Sea?

Humans have dipped their feet into ocean discovery beginning 332 BC when Alexander the Great instructed demolition divers to remove underwater obstacles from a harbor at his siege of Tyre (Lebanon). During earlier years, it was believed that life could not exist in the deep sea, due to sunlight not being able to reach the water at a starting depth of 200 meters, temperatures freezing at 4,000 meters, and atmospheric pressures increasing the deeper we explore—making it impossible for humans to reach the seafloor.

The theory was proven incorrect in 1818, during the first of many Royal Naval expeditions. John Ross commanded the H.M.S Isabella and Alexander on a voyage through the Northwest Passage, where he recovered benthic marine life— proving that life in the deep sea does exist. Ross gathered worms, jellyfish and basket stars at 2,000 meters deep. When Scottish naturalist Charles Wyville Thomson fished out the Royal Navy torpedo boat, the H.M.S Lightning in 1868, he found an abundance of invertebrates at a depth of 4,389 meters. Four years later, 30,000 marine specimens were collected, during Louis Agassiz’s expedition from the United States’ East to West Coast and around South America.

Setting sail in 1872, Sir John Murray, aboard the H.M.S Challenger, discovered 4,417 new species on his three-year voyage across the globe. The research he conducted for the Royal Society of London was compiled into 50 volumes of new data on marine life, ocean floors, the structure of the sea and meteorology. The volumes also included his discovery of the Mid-Ocean Atlantic ridge and continental shelves. Further proof of creatures living in the deep sea was established in 1977 during the Galápagos Hydrothermal Expedition, when Robert Ballard’s team discovered hydrothermal vents. These vents emit extremely heated water and chemicals—which allows ecosystems to survive off of these chemicals through a process called chemosynthesis. Other ways that deep sea animals survive is through bioluminescence—light they self-generate—and a means to lure in their prey.

captionnnn

captionnn

captionnn

captionnnn

A blue clam at the Great Barrier Reef. Photo courtesy of csharker, from Pixabay.

Marine Vessels & Submarine Valleys

Cornelius van Drebel, a Dutch inventor, built the first submarine vessel in 1623. He dropped the submersible in the Thames River in England, to a depth of merely 4.5 meters. In 1857, James Alden aboard the Coast Survey Steamer Active discovers California’s Monterey Canyon—the first known submarine valley. [Video] It was not until 1882 that the U.S. Fisheries Commission built the first oceanographic research vessel—the Albatross. [Imgs] The pioneers of manned ocean exploration were William Beebe and his partner Otis Barton. In 1934 they were lowered in a tethered bathysphere (later known as a bathyscaphe), to a depth of 923 meters. In 1954, Georges Houot and Pierre Willm explore the coast of West Africa at 4,041 meters deep, in the untethered French research submersible, named FNRS-3. [Img] Six years later, the Trieste bathyscaphe reaches the deepest point know at that time—10,912 meters into the Mariana Trench. The only other person to dive into the Mariana Trench was James Cameron—National Geographic explorer and filmmaker. In 2012, Cameron boarded the Challenger Deep submersible on the world’s first solo mission, and reached the 6.8-mile deep underwater valley in merely 70 minutes. [Img]

Cataloging Marine Data and Future Research Plans

Even though 80% of our ocean remains to be uncovered, oceanographers have discovered 409,000 species. The Census of Marine Life— the first marine life online database created in 2010—classifies the diverse aquatic species, their numbers and their geographical distribution. Until present day, scientists are devoted to exploring the depths of our ocean. Seabed 2030 is a collaborative project between Nippon Foundation of Japan and the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO). Their goal is to map Earth’s entire ocean floors by the year 2030. Let’s see what the future of the depths of our seas will hold!