A team of scientists have now given us technology that will allow us to have eyes and ears 5,000 meter under the sea. Researchers have completed tests on a revolutionary under sea network of hi-tech sensors that will likely change the face of oceanography forever.
The team has been using special robot for three weeks to examine the nodes that have been installed under the water’s surface at a depth of 50,00 meters just off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. Pictures were taken of the cables and sensors to ensure that they were in place and the project was on track.
The Ocean Observatories Initiative will prove one of the most comprehensive studies of the sea ever done. The researcher will have access to the chemical, biological, physical and geological processes in action in the ocean all the time. It will be a major shift from the current ship based oceanography research methodology employed.
The project is scheduled to go live in 2014 and will produce data 24 hours a day for at least 25 years. It has so far cost $153million, which is being funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. Its mission is to establish the fully integrated sensory system on the seafloor to collect data that an oceanographer had not imagined possible till now.