Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Live Webcast of an Ocean Floor Exploration

The National Science Foundation, W.M. Keck Foundation, ResearchChannel and the University of Washington TV have teamed up in an effort to produce the first live video broadcasts from the seafloor. Weather permitting the webcast is scheduled for Sept. 28 and 29. Link to the Webcast site here including updated times, dates and additional video.

The broadcasts will be of the Juan de Fuca Ridge seafloor 200 miles off the Washington coast an area known to be one of the most geologically and biologically active sites in the global network of mid-ocean ridges.

The Ocean Floor (Source: NASA graphic)

The broadcasts are part of a five-week expedition funded in part by the National Science Foundation, W.M. Keck Foundation and the University of Washington. Used in the expedition are the remotely controlled submersibles JASON II and ABE from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

The expedition is referred to as VISION 05, for Visually Integrated Science for Interactive Ocean Networked Systems. It's purpose is to study of how tectonic plate interaction can support exotic and ancient microbial life forms deep within the seafloor.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know about ocean floor, but the folks at Monterey Bay Aquarium and MBARI have been doing live video feeds from the ROVs in the bay to the aquarium for more than a few years. My sister-in-law is on the science staff of MBARI and my brother helped install the antenna on the mountain above the town. The differential GPS error on the reference corner was about the size of a golf ball. They need the information to calculate how to point the antenna on the support ship...

Lubber's Line said...

Rick t, thanks for stopping by. You’re right I seem to recall that Dr. Robert Ballard's Institute at the Mystic Aquarium had some live TV link up with a ROV at Monterey Bay. I believe it’s called the Jason project and is for young kids interested in ocean science. In addition, universities with oceanography schools like the University of RI do live ROV feeds of explorations back to their campus and other universities.

The Visions ’05 exploration and University of Washington claims that this was the first time a live broadcast of such an exploration was made available to the public on the internet and to satellite TV subscribers, not confined to academia.

Anonymous said...

Hi,

I was the person responsible for the MBARI live feeds from the 2 ROVs for 10 years until OCT2006. Nothing to do with Ballard.

I'm assuming from Rick T's comments, his brother is T3 who I worked for and is still a good friend.

If you have any questions I can be reached at hakerkatz@yahoo.com

Regards,

40 watt SmartPaq Compact Fluorescent Lamp said...

Current USA stand behind their Compact Fluorescent lamp design 100% They have “Up to 50% more light output over competitive Brands.” Current USA’s bulbs endure a 10 hour ‘burn-in’ testing process that guarantees their performance out of the box.