We're working with countries all around the planet.
This is a global program.
We're really the only group in the world doing this.
This is Alice's looking class.
You come here and step through the looking glass into another world.
This is where we beam you down.
This is not something just being done in their hands at bay.
This is the largest ocean exploration program on planet Earth.
This is the epicenter of global exploration.
This is really your eyes number one in this category.
We want to understand our planet.
We want to understand what we own.
This is exploration of the second Louisiana Purchase.
This is 50% of our country that's full of resources, it's full of fisheries, it's full
of places that need to be protected.
But before you can do any of that, you need to know what you got.
Driven by questions, consumed with seeking answers, all in the name of exploration.
The inner space center at the Graduate School of Oceanography, located on the University
of Rhode Island's Bay campus, is changing the way we discover, connect, and process
data when it comes to exploring the new frontiers of our planet, the oceans.
In this edition of URI Today, we will uncover what modern day exploration looks like in
an increasingly connected world, and how the technology we are developing is creating
opportunities that will forever change the way we understand and engage with our planet.
Exploration has always been limited by our technological capabilities.
How far can we travel, how fast can we get there, how much information, and of what quality
can be gathered.
In a place that doesn't welcome air-breathing land animals, technology becomes the deciding
factor in the success of exploring the mysterious, largely unknown ocean realm.
It wasn't until the late 1970s that world-renowned ocean explorer Dr. Robert Ballard, founder
of the RMS Titanic and Inner Space Center, unexpectedly realized the field of ocean
exploration had hit a stalemate.
It was in 1979, two years before we made the greatest underwater discovery ever made in
the discovery of hydrothermal vents in the Galapagos Rift.
But they were made by geologists, so we had to wait two years before we could bring the
first group of biologists to study this major discovery of the original life on Earth.
And so we took them down, and I took one to, his name was Holger Janisch.
We dove down 9,000 feet, I took him to the hydrothermal vent, we parked the submarine
with an Alvin, and he looked out the window.
And I had already seen them, so I was testing a new digital camera.
And to watch the video, I had to turn my back to the windows of the submarine, to a little
monitor in the back of the submarine, a 19-inch rack, and I'm playing away.
And then all of a sudden, Holger's was on my shoulder looking at the monitor, and I
said, so what are you doing?
He said, I'm looking at the monitor, and I said, well, why?
He said, well, it's better for you than I'm getting out of the window.
And I said, you mean to tell me we brought you halfway around the world?
I took you down 9,000 feet, put you right next to the greatest biological discovery
we made, and you've turned your back to the window?
He says, yeah, it's a better view, and I went, this is nuts.
For centuries, ocean exploration consisted of physically traveling to the area of interest,
costing tremendous amounts of time, energy, and money.
But it was this moment that sent Ballard off on a different quest, one that would shape
his entire career.
Almost immediately after the Galapagos Rift dive, Ballard began experimenting and testing
new ways of connecting deep ocean exploration with the rest of the world.
I was thinking, oh, there's got to be a better way of doing this exploration, because I was
spending all my time mostly going up and down in the submarine.
It takes, it averages up to the ocean 13,000 feet, it's taking me two and a half hours
to get in the morning to work in the morning, two and a half hours to get home at night.
I spent minutes on the bottom of the ocean.
So here I am at Stanford, reflecting upon 20 years of living in an elevator, and all
sorts of things are happening, and what later became Silicon Valley, microprocessing, digital
imagery, fiber optics, and I saw in all of that technology a way of moving our spirit
instead of our body, and I called it telepresence.
The idea was that the spirit, A, is indestructible and can move at the speed of light.
And so why not let the body, which doesn't like the bottom of the ocean, be somewhere
safe like here, but our spirit moves us to a site.
It's sort of like beaming down Scotty, and I said, that is the way we should be going,
that we really need to use this advanced technology to move our spirit instead of our body.
And more importantly, anyone can go along with us, and we can do it 24 hours a day,
and that was where it all came from.
At the heart of the inner space center lies mission control, the main hub for telepresence
communication.
So telepresence we refer to as a suite of technologies that allows people to feel and
act like they're at a location other than their present location.
So we do this for ships, where we have teams of people on shore that are acting and feeling
like they're with the team that's onboard the ship.
When we first built it 10 years ago, it was going to be for Rhode Island what Houston
is for NASA, right?
So this is mission control for inner space, just like Houston is mission control for outer
space.
Grazed by a 20 foot screen with video projection, live production studio, immense data archive,
and more than a dozen high bandwidth connected computers, mission control allows teams of
scientists, teachers, and students to remotely participate in research cruises all while
in real time.
Usually we're working with ships that have robotic vehicle systems, ROVs.
So there are a team of engineers and scientists on the ship that are operating this technology.
So we're just extending that same functionality to shore so that the students and the teachers
and the scientists who are participating are actually part of the dive.
So they're actually making observations, they're directing where the ROV goes, they're determining
what samples should be collected, they're helping to analyze and identify different objects
on the seafloor, and basically making the dives successful.
To carry out the operations, the inner space center primarily works with two exploration
vessels, the EV Nautilus, and the NOAA ship, Okeanos Explorer.
These ships are connected directly to mission control and have the technological capabilities
of participating remotely, broadcasting live, to multiple online platforms in high definition.
I think it's wonderful that it's here at the Graduate School of Oceanography.
It's something that, this is really cutting edge technology that is being used in ocean
graphic science, it's recognized throughout the world, this is the place to go, to interact
and be involved with this sort of technology.
The Nautilus is set up as an ocean exploration vessel, offering scientists and researchers
a multitude of tools, but the main piece of gear on board is a remotely operated vehicle
named Hercules.
This state-of-the-art ROV is equipped with high definition cameras, high intensity lights,
and has great maneuverability.
The Okeanos has a similar design, offering seafloor mapping tools, ROVs, and telepresence.
Staff can broadcast live images from the ROVs diving on the seafloor to scientists ashore,
newsrooms, and classrooms around the world.
Often visitors to the inner space center at URI's Bay Campus can watch live feeds from
these ships when they are actively conducting missions.
If there's only a few people that stumble onto something, they don't know if it's new.
They may think it's new.
Here we can find out in a minute and a second.
We have so many scientists that are doctors on call.
We're constantly stumbling over new species, but we don't know that, so we just pick up
the phone and we can call anyone on our cell phones.
We can call someone who's asleep and tell them to boot up their laptop and stream the
discovery while they're in bed in their pajamas.
Recognized for successfully implementing telepresence, the inner space center has partnered with several
organizations, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National
Science Foundation, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
New vessels are being constructed with smaller birthing areas, and in turn, leave less space
to physically house scientists.
By their very design, these new vessels will require telepresence.
This rewards opportunities to partner with cutting-edge research platforms, like the
ALUSHA, owned by the Dalio Foundation and managed by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Another application for telepresence has been on the ALUSHA, which is a yacht or a mega yacht
that is also used for exploration, so it contains two submarines, and the inner space
center group installed telepresence capability this last year on the ALUSHA, and that's going
to be, I think, an important part of the ALUSHA operations going forward.
That is a platform that can be pretty experimental, so it's a ship that, in partnership with Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institution, can take on some of their new technology and new vehicle
systems.
The ALUSHA is a smaller, more nimble research vehicle equipped with submarines and hybrid
underwater vehicle systems.
The submarines on the ALUSHA can use specialized underwater communication devices to link to
the surface ship.
Pairing with telepresence capabilities, the ALUSHA, for the first time, was able to broadcast
live video and audio from the submarines on the sea floor to the inner space center,
thousands of miles away.
We were able to do live shots from inside the submarine out to the world through telepresence,
so that was pretty cool.
I think this sort of application is one that I'm very interested in, the idea of taking
mega-yachts and equipping them with telepresence, ROVs, and really expanding the world of ROV
applications, if you will, going forward.
So this is something that we're looking into here at the Graduate School of Oceanography,
and I'm hoping that we'll have other yachts that are equipped with this capability, which
will, in turn, provide more opportunity for participation and ocean exploration.
I think a lot of people have seen what we can do with the interspace center, and they
like it, and they want to be part of it, because it helps educate people all over the world.
Telepresence is shaping the way scientific research is conducted and is changing the
efficiency of at sea missions.
But scientific research isn't the only arena the interspace center is playing in.
In October of 2015, Hurricane Joaquin sank the container ship El Faro, leaving many
questions unanswered about what transpired during the ship's final hours.
There's a lot of effort into having telepresence support missions at sea for other reasons.
In fact, we recently completed a project where we helped the National Transportation Safety
Board find the remains of the El Faro shipwreck.
When the El Faro sank, its voyage data recorder, which is the equivalent of the black box,
was lost with that ship.
Finding the voyage data recorder could provide answers as to how and why the ship sank, preventing
similar catastrophes from happening in the future.
But in order to search a large swath of ocean in an effective and timely manner, multiple
agencies would need to be present and collaborate during the operation.
By adding telepresence to the mission, investigators at sea were able to connect with teams back
on land.
This dramatically leveraged the way search areas were prioritized and analyzed.
The mission was successful.
The interspace center played a critical role.
Just clearly got the attention and appreciation of the federal agencies involved.
Having direct access to Narragansett Bay, the interspace center engages with plenty of operations
back at home.
The ocean state provides the perfect setting to pursue a range of projects in physical,
chemical, geological, and even archaeological fields.
The Graduate School of Oceanography has their own research vessel, the RV Endeavour, fully
equipped with telepresence and accessible to both students and faculty.
We were quite interested in equipping our vessel that we operate the Endeavour with
the telepresence capability.
So we've added the hardware on the ship so that we can transmit the high definition video.
And so this was something that I was very keen about because I wanted our ship to have
that capability.
And we tested that system in Block Island Sound off of Block Island, and we actually
dove on the German U-boat U-85-3.
And the idea here was that this was a pilot study to see how the gear worked.
I think it was a very successful cruise, and it did demonstrate that the Endeavour can
use this technology going forward.
Recently, another cruise took place here in Rhode Island Waters.
It was commissioned by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and GSO's paleoclimatologist
Dr. John King.
This particular project was just off the Rhode Island coast to try to understand how that
landscape has evolved since the last Ice Age when native peoples were living here.
With large volumes of water incorporated in massive glaciers, sea level during the last
Ice Age was about 120 meters lower than it is today.
During this period, native inhabitants could walk from mainland Rhode Island to Block Island
without getting wet.
The University of Rhode Island invited members of the Narragansett Indian tribe and other
local tribes to participate in the cruise with hopes of reconstructing details about
that now-submerged terrestrial landscape.
They collected sediment cores, they were analyzing those sediment cores to recreate
the terrestrial landscape that is now submerged, and they were educating the Native American
folks on what their tribal lands are today and what they were in the past.
So it was a very rewarding project because we got to use the Interspace Center to bring
participants here to actually take part in those same discussions, and so that was an
interesting project.
The ability to bring people along on the cruise without physically being there has opened
the doors for interdisciplinary collaboration and participant access.
A new professor of physical oceanography, Melissa Omond, just completed her first cruise
as chief scientist with the RV Endeavour, studying currents off the coast of southern
New England.
Well, I was introduced to the work of the Interspace Center under unusual circumstances.
Even before I started at GSO, I applied for ship time on the Endeavour, and that was through
a Rhode Island Endeavour program.
And so I applied for this over a year in advance of when the cruise was actually going to be
held as the time for the cruise approached, I learned that I was pregnant and that I was
going to be about almost eight months pregnant during the period of the cruise.
Not wanting to give up an important opportunity to kick start her lab and test instrumentation,
Melissa was determined to find a way to lead the cruise.
She approached Dean Corliss and learned of telepresence.
And Melissa Omond ran the cruise as chief scientist here in this building using telepresence.
So it's a great example of how you can use this application to solve a number of challenges.
And I think it was very successful and people certainly paid attention to it.
While the cruise was underway, the science team aboard the Endeavour towed specialized
nets, collecting various specimens of phytoplankton.
Within seconds, live video from the ship's lab was broadcast to the interspace center's
mission control, where Melissa was staged.
Then another GSO faculty here, Jan Rines, she appeared at the door of the mission control
and said, hey, I've just been watching the YouTube feed and I noticed that you were trying
to figure out what kinds of species these diatoms are, I can help you.
And so she sat down and we basically talked with Colleen and chatted about what different
things she had been seeing in the nettoe and she brought an element of expertise that we
didn't have and wouldn't have had on the ship if it wasn't for telepresence.
These are the motors that are going to drive.
The interspace center offers a range of outreach and engagement opportunities for the public,
including expansive programs for high school students, teachers and educators.
Yes, so we've had lots of different educational initiatives with different schools throughout
Rhode Island and even southern New England.
And so at times we can bring those teachers and those students in.
In fact, we host several summer camps where students from Rhode Island and nearby Connecticut
and Massachusetts can come and spend a week here and they learn all about what the interspace
center does and it's part of an ongoing educational initiative that we run here.
Because we have partnerships with NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
and partnerships with Dr. Ballard's programs with the Ocean Exploration Trust, they actually
have internship programs and teacher at sea programs that they can apply to.
So there's opportunities there for teachers and students to apply and by nature of their
participation in those programs they get involved in the interspace center and telepresence
in what we do.
The interspace center offers facility tours and educational program bookings through their
website.
Their web visitors can also tune in to the live feeds from the ships and join scientists,
researchers and communicators at any time during their dive missions.
As scientists, we need to communicate our work and why it matters, why it's important
and really what we are learning to the general public.
This is an avenue, an opportunity to be able to do that in a way that we wouldn't have
otherwise been able to.
So I think that the telepresence is really offering somewhat of a different view.
It's very raw, it's very primitive in terms of the raw data, how that gets interpreted
by scientists, how we first look at that data and even what it looks like.
I think all of those things have typically been very cloistered on the ship and we really
haven't had the opportunity to show a greater audience what that can look like.
And I see telepresence as a pretty exciting opportunity to be able to do that, that kind
of outreach.
It's really, I think weaving a tapestry of stories together that really convey the essence
of what we're trying to get at.
We can go anywhere with this technology.
We can reach every school in Rhode Island, every school in the U.S., every school on
the planet can be touched by this interspace center, that's pretty cool.
For decades, scientific research remained much of a mystery to non-scientists, but that
era is over.
Telepresence and the collaborative operations of the interspace center are expanding every
year, connecting more people from different disciplines and fields, giving them a front
row seat to discovery and exploration.
Research is expanding exponentially and data processing can now happen in near real time.
The implications of this have been and will continue to be profound for our global community.
Where will exploration be in five years, ten years, twenty, likely beyond our wildest dreams?
But one thing will remain certain.
They'll still be driven by questions and on a quest to seek the answers.
