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Exploration allows us to inspire others to be explorers and scientists.

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*“By discovering and understanding these ecosystems, we can unlock cures to diseases, grow new foods, discover new medicines, create new industries, and fully understand our planet. The possibilities are endless, if we choose to open the door to them.”

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This week marks the 10th Annual World Oceans Day, a global confluence of ocean-awareness events intended to bring our oceans the level of public attention they deserve. As we both have had the opportunity to explore a fair amount of our globe's seas, on this occasion we'd like to share our excitement and our vision for the future.

Ray Dalio (@raydalio) is the founder of Bridgewater Associates and the OceanX initiative. Marc Benioff (@benioff) is CEO and chair of Salesforce, as well as founder of the Benioff Ocean Initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

To us, the ocean is humanity's most important and most under-examined treasure. While the world below the ocean's surface is more than twice the size of the world above it and contains an estimated 94 percent of the space where life can exist on Earth, only 5 percent of the world's oceans have been fully explored.

The ocean is critical to human life-more than 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe comes from it. It drives our weather, provides a nutritious food supply, and is a key source of commerce, supporting more than 28 million jobs in the United States alone. For those reasons, it deserves our reverence and protection. Instead, humans neglect it and treat it like a toilet that we overfish from.

We believe ocean exploration is more exciting and more important than space exploration. Yet it only receives about one-one hundredth as much funding. We want to change that by showing people the ecosystems and underwater habitats across the globe that are brimming with unexplored environments filled with species that have evolved in ways we cannot possibly imagine. By discovering and understanding these ecosystems, we can unlock cures to diseases, grow new foods, discover new medicines, create new industries, and fully understand our planet. The possibilities are endless, if we choose to open the door to them.

Thanks to profound technological advancements in recent years, we now have the potential to open these doors like never before. Using new sensors, submarine technology, and autonomous vehicles, humans have the opportunity to advance the public's understanding and appreciation of the ocean, much as the development of scuba equipment and underwater cameras allowed ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau to captivate the world 50 years ago.

Using many of these technologies, the BBC's recent Blue Planet II inspired a new generation of explorers to turn toward the ocean and prodded public policymakers to introduce new measures to prevent plastics pollution. When it sets sail next year, the Alucia2, a new vessel funded by OceanX, will be the most advanced vessel designed for both media production and cutting-edge scientific research, bringing the excitement of ocean discovery to the world as broadcast and digital programs and in real time.

Exploring our oceans is key to protecting them. As renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle has said, "Far and away, the biggest threat to the ocean is ignorance." Exploration is the key to ending that ignorance and making the oceans accessible, tangible, and exciting to the broader world so that people will understand and protect them.

Creating such understanding will ensure we don't lose the richness of the biological assets in our oceans before they are even discovered. Protected areas, such as Papahānaumokuākea and the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monuments, serve as savings accounts that protect strategic areas of our ocean for future exploration and discovery while simultaneously producing more fish, food, and income for fisheries.

Even as we begin to explore the most remote reaches of our oceans, we are finding them sullied-with trash detected at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of our ocean, and floating in the most remote regions of Antarctica. This signals we must act now to ensure we discover more than plastic bottles during this next generation of ocean exploration.

There are many great government and non-profit organizations, philanthropists, scientists, and entrepreneurs doing critical and unheralded work to protect our oceans-but they need more support. Not just in the form of funding, but in the form of public energy and momentum.

One positive sign is that world leaders at the G7 Summit in Canada today are prioritizing ocean health, calling for aggressive measures to combat plastic pollution and climate change. We need this interest to translate into a firm G7 stance on oceans. And we need this ripple of leadership to turn into a tidal wave of public, private, and community support for securing the healthy future for our oceans upon which we all depend.

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It's Time for the Next Wave of Ocean Exploration and Protection

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This week marks the 10th Annual World Oceans Day, a global confluence of ocean-awareness events intended to bring our oceans the level of public attention they deserve. As we both have had the opportunity to explore a fair amount of our globe's seas, on this occasion we'd like to share our excitement and our vision for the future.

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*The ocean divers now use sensors, submarine technology, and autonomous vehicles, humans have the opportunity to advance the public's understanding appreciation of the ocean
* People only did this so people could explore the ocean more and so they can also learn new stuff about the ocean because without the equipment they wouldn't be able to explore it

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This week marks the 10th Annual World Oceans Day, a global confluence of ocean-awareness events intended to bring our oceans the level of public attention they deserve. As we both have had the opportunity to explore a fair amount of our globe's seas, on this occasion we'd like to share our excitement and our vision for the future.

Ray Dalio (@raydalio) is the founder of Bridgewater Associates and the OceanX initiative. Marc Benioff (@benioff) is CEO and chair of Salesforce, as well as founder of the Benioff Ocean Initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

To us, the ocean is humanity's most important and most under-examined treasure. While the world below the ocean's surface is more than twice the size of the world above it and contains an estimated 94 percent of the space where life can exist on Earth, only 5 percent of the world's oceans have been fully explored.

The ocean is critical to human life-more than 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe comes from it. It drives our weather, provides a nutritious food supply, and is a key source of commerce, supporting more than 28 million jobs in the United States alone. For those reasons, it deserves our reverence and protection. Instead, humans neglect it and treat it like a toilet that we overfish from.

We believe ocean exploration is more exciting and more important than space exploration. Yet it only receives about one-one hundredth as much funding. We want to change that by showing people the ecosystems and underwater habitats across the globe that are brimming with unexplored environments filled with species that have evolved in ways we cannot possibly imagine. By discovering and understanding these ecosystems, we can unlock cures to diseases, grow new foods, discover new medicines, create new industries, and fully understand our planet. The possibilities are endless, if we choose to open the door to them.

Thanks to profound technological advancements in recent years, we now have the potential to open these doors like never before. Using new sensors, submarine technology, and autonomous vehicles, humans have the opportunity to advance the public's understanding and appreciation of the ocean, much as the development of scuba equipment and underwater cameras allowed ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau to captivate the world 50 years ago.

Using many of these technologies, the BBC's recent Blue Planet II inspired a new generation of explorers to turn toward the ocean and prodded public policymakers to introduce new measures to prevent plastics pollution. When it sets sail next year, the Alucia2, a new vessel funded by OceanX, will be the most advanced vessel designed for both media production and cutting-edge scientific research, bringing the excitement of ocean discovery to the world as broadcast and digital programs and in real time.

Exploring our oceans is key to protecting them. As renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle has said, "Far and away, the biggest threat to the ocean is ignorance." Exploration is the key to ending that ignorance and making the oceans accessible, tangible, and exciting to the broader world so that people will understand and protect them.

Creating such understanding will ensure we don't lose the richness of the biological assets in our oceans before they are even discovered. Protected areas, such as Papahānaumokuākea and the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monuments, serve as savings accounts that protect strategic areas of our ocean for future exploration and discovery while simultaneously producing more fish, food, and income for fisheries.

Even as we begin to explore the most remote reaches of our oceans, we are finding them sullied-with trash detected at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of our ocean, and floating in the most remote regions of Antarctica. This signals we must act now to ensure we discover more than plastic bottles during this next generation of ocean exploration.

There are many great government and non-profit organizations, philanthropists, scientists, and entrepreneurs doing critical and unheralded work to protect our oceans-but they need more support. Not just in the form of funding, but in the form of public energy and momentum.

One positive sign is that world leaders at the G7 Summit in Canada today are prioritizing ocean health, calling for aggressive measures to combat plastic pollution and climate change. We need this interest to translate into a firm G7 stance on oceans. And we need this ripple of leadership to turn into a tidal wave of public, private, and community support for securing the healthy future for our oceans upon which we all depend.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
It's Time for the Next Wave of Ocean Exploration and Protection

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This week marks the 10th Annual World Oceans Day, a global confluence of ocean-awareness events intended to bring our oceans the level of public attention they deserve. As we both have had the opportunity to explore a fair amount of our globe's seas, on this occasion we'd like to share our excitement and our vision for the future.

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*Through ocean exploration, we collect data and information needed to address both current and emerging science and management needs.                             *From exploring the ocean we found and collected new data, and information that could be used to help emerging science, and management needs.

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Exploration is key to increasing our understanding of the ocean, so we can more effectively manage, conserve, regulate, and use ocean resources that are vital to our economy and to all of our lives.

Despite the fact that the ocean covers approximately 70% of Earth's surface and plays a critical role in supporting life on our planet, from the air we breathe and the food we eat to weather and climate patterns, our understanding of the ocean remains limited.

Ocean exploration is about making discoveries, searching for things that are unusual and unexpected. As the first step in the scientific process, the rigorous observations and documentation of biological, chemical, physical, geological, and archaeological aspects of the ocean gained from exploration set the stage for future research and decision-making.

Through ocean exploration, we collect data and information needed to address both current and emerging science and management needs. Exploration helps to ensure that ocean resources are not just managed, but managed in a sustainable way, so those resources are around for future generations to enjoy. Exploration of the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone is important for national security, allowing us to set boundaries, protect American interests, and claim ocean resources.

Unlocking the mysteries of ocean ecosystems can reveal new sources for medical therapies and vaccines, food, energy, and more as well as inspire inventions that mimic adaptations of deep-sea animals. Information from ocean exploration can help us understand how we are affecting and being affected by changes in Earth's environment, including changes in weather and climate. Insights from ocean exploration can help us better understand and respond to earthquakes, tsunamis, and other hazards.

The challenges met while exploring the ocean can provide the impetus for new technologies and engineering innovations that can be applied in other situations, allowing us to respond more effectively in the face of an ocean crisis, such as an oil spill. And, ocean exploration can improve ocean literacy and inspire young people to seek critical careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

As a species, humans are naturally inquisitive - curiosity, desire for knowledge, and quest for adventure motivate modern explorers even today. And if all of these examples don't provide enough reasons to explore the ocean, well, ocean exploration is also just cool (if you need it: proof).

The NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research is the only federal program dedicated to exploring the deep ocean, closing prominent gaps in our basic understanding of U.S. deep waters and the seafloor and delivering the ocean information needed to strengthen the economy, health, and security of our nation.

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What Is Ocean Exploration and Why Is It Important?: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research

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Despite the fact that the ocean covers approximately 70% of Earth's surface and plays a critical role in supporting life on our planet, from the air we breathe and the food we eat to weather and climate patterns, our understanding of the ocean remains limited.

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*“Over the past 30 years, scientists have extracted at least 20,000 new biochemical substances from marine creatures. Dozens have reached clinical trials; a handful may soon be reviewed by the FDA for possible approval.”
They used Bugula Neritina from the ocean to treat Leukemia and melanoma.
*By researching the ocean, we can help save lives.

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From slime to sponges, scientists are plumbing the ocean's depths for new medications to treat cancer, pain and other ailments

smithsonian.com

Fred Rainey was standing aboard the 100-foot-long spree about seven miles off the marshy Louisiana coast, rocking on four-foot swells. All around, oil-rig platforms rose like skyscrapers from the heaving waters of the Gulf of Mexico's "oil patch," a 64,000-square-mile stretch of shallow ocean where 4,000 steel platforms pump enough petroleum to account for one-third of the nation's production. But Rainey was not prospecting for oil. Amicrobiologist at Louisiana State University, he was on the trail of an unlikely quarry: slime. In particular, he sought algae, sponges, sea urchins, soft corals and other squishy, mostly immobile organisms that have attached to the oil platforms' undersides in tangled mats up to a foot and a half thick.

Scientists believe that from such lowly marine creatures a number of medications may one day be derived. Compounds from marine sources are now being tested as treatments for chronic pain, asthma and various malignancies, including breast cancer. (A new generation of industrial chemicals as well- particularly, powerful adhesives-are on the horizon.) Slime, it turns out, is absolutely brilliant at producing useful biochemicals.

Botanists and chemists have long prospected in tropical forests and other terrestrial ecosystems for unusual substances to meet human needs. But the world's oceans, which may contain as many as two million as yet undiscovered species, have remained largely untapped. Denizens of exotic, difficult-to-reach locations, such as deep-sea hot vents and seabed sediments, have hardly been documented. However, as advances in diving technology open new underwater realms to exploration, and developments in molecular biology and genetics allow labs to isolate molecules at a pace unimagined even a decade ago, the sea's potential as a biochemical resource is becoming apparent. Over the past 30 years, scientists have extracted at least 20,000 new biochemical substances from marine creatures. Dozens have reached clinical trials; a handful may soon be reviewed by the FDA for possible approval. "Because we humans live on land, that's where we've always looked," says organic chemist William Fenical, director of the Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. "But if you were to ask from scratch 'Where should we explore?' the answer would always be the sea. Now we're there."

Rainey, an easygoing native of Belfast, Northern Ireland, has collected microbes on high-Arctic islands and extremely dry deserts, including the Atacama in northern Chile. An unabashed nondiver, he claims he is unable to identify most marine specimens that aren't microbes-except perhaps starfish. "If you can see it with the naked eye, I probably can't help you," he quips. He made his first foray into marine bioprospecting in 2001, when the Department of the Interior asked Louisiana State University to survey life-forms on oil and natural-gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.Marine biologists (and fishermen) have long been aware that offshore oil platforms function as artificial islands, creating new frontiers especially for sessile, or stationary, organisms such as sponges and coral; these organisms typically reproduce by releasing eggs and sperm that, when fertilized, become lar vae. The larvae, in turn, may drift hundreds of miles before attaching to something solid.

Recently, a research team led by Rainey that included specialists in mollusks, algae and foraminifera (tiny one-celled shell-builders) conducted a three-day collecting expedition aboard the spree, a chartered vessel. They embarked from Port Fourchon, Louisiana, a hamlet surrounded by saltwater bayous that are punctuated by giant oil-industry installations and the occasional Cajun fishing shack. The plan was to collect samples at five oil-rig platforms. The researchers and several divers pulled up to the dock with piles of gear and a sixfoot- high freezer for storing specimens. They winched it onto the Spree's upper deck and lashed it down with industrial- strength straps. The skipper, who insisted on being addressed as Captain Frank, was a large, gruff man with flaming red hair; his feet were bare, his toenails painted purple. He resembled a Viking marauder who had changed into shorts and T-shirt.

We cast off and met in the cabin to talk strategy. At each rig, the divers would chisel off a few pounds of whatever was growing on the platform legs at depths of 60 feet and 30 feet and at the sea-air interface. They would also use large sterile syringes to collect seawater (and thus the microbes inhabiting it). The waters around oil platforms are dangerous environments. Tidal surges and currents can bash a diver's head against a steel platform. The platform's legs and crossbraces harbor remnants of commercial fishing nets, not to mention lines fitted with fishhooks. Some platforms are equipped with large intake pipes that draw vast quantities of water; a diver who strays too close could be sucked in and drowned.

Within an hour we were in open water, though on all sides a city of steel oil platforms stretched to the horizon. At some points, I could count 50 at a time. The smallest consisted of just a few girders and pipes, rising 20 or 30 feet out of the water. The largest-gargantuan contraptions fitted with stairways, piping systems, winches, sheds, tanks and satellite dishes-towered 100 feet or higher. Helicopters buzzed from one to another, ferrying crews. Fishing boats bobbed everywhere: the platforms are piscine magnets. Some fish come to hide from predators, others to feed off organisms that have made the platforms home.

The first platform we visited, 42-C, was a rusty yellow monster 16 miles offshore in about 100 feet of murky green water. It sat on three massive legs, its nine well-stems, thick as utility poles, plunging through the center of the platform. Two-foot swells washed up and down its waterline, revealing the topmost layer of what the scientists were seeking: a wrinkled crust of barnacles six inches thick. Acrewman tied the spree to the structure with a heavy rope.Adiver, Sam Salvo, plunged overboard and fastened a bright yellow safety line to one leg about 20 feet down. Rainey had high hopes. "There are so many microbes out here," he said from the aft deck. "Half of what they bring back will be new to science."

People have long exploited potent chemicals made by marine creatures. In imperial Rome, historians speculate, Nero's mother, Agrippina the Younger, paved the way for her son's reign by lacing hapless relatives' food with a poison extracted from a shell-less mollusk known as the sea hare. On the Hawaiian island of Maui, native warriors dipped spears in a lethal tidal-pool coral; enemies succumbed if they were so much as nicked.

Scientists have pursued such historical clues with some success. They have isolated a series of powerful toxins from Dolabella auricularia-the sea hare that was most likely the source of the poison that dispatched Nero's rivals. Today, researchers, including a group at Arizona State University, are investigating the compounds, called dolastatins, for their potential anticancer properties. Chemists have also discovered a perhaps even more toxic compound, palytoxin, from the soft coral Palythoa toxica, likely the organism used to deadly effect by Hawaiian warriors. Researchers at Harvard, Northwestern and Rockefeller universities are trying to determine this compound's potential.

The work done over the years in medicinal botany has been a major spur for marine bioprospecting. More than 100 important drugs originate either as direct extracts or synthetic redesigns of plant molecules, including aspirin (from willow bark), digitalis (from the flowering herb foxglove), morphine (from opium poppies) and the antimalarial drug quinine (from the bark of the cinchona tree).

Researchers largely overlooked the oceans as a source of pharmaceuticals until the advent of scuba technology, first tested in 1943. Among the pioneers of marine bioprospecting was Paul Scheuer, an organic chemist and a refugee from Nazi Germany who ended up at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1950. He began to collect, identify and study an astonishing array of organisms-in particular, soft, sessile creatures. What intrigued Scheuer and others was that although such creatures possessed no obvious defense mechanism against predators-no teeth, claws, flippers to effect escape, or even a tough skin-they thrived. Scheuer and others assumed that the organisms had potent chemical defenses that might prove useful to people, so they began searching for the compounds using tried-and-true methods of biochemistry: grinding up specimens, dissolving the materials in various solvents, then testing the resulting extracts for a range of properties, including an ability to kill bacteria, to react with nerve cells or to attack malignant cells.

By the 1970s, the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) and other research centers had begun to fund expeditions around the globe to collect marine samples. So far, the NCI has screened tens of thousands of marine extracts, and the institute continues to receive roughly 1,000 organisms from the field each year. David Newman, a chemist with the NCI's natural products program, says the massive canvassing is necessary because only one out of every several thousand sub stances shows any promise. "You might expect to make a better return by playing Powerball," says Newman. "But with drugs, when you hit it, you hit it big."

The arduous process of identifying and testing marine compounds is about to greatly accelerate, some scientists say. Automated chemical probes will seek out interesting stretches of genetic material in a batch of seawater or ground-up sponge; then, the thinking goes, gene-copying techniques will enable researchers to produce an abundance of whatever compound the gene is responsible for. "Now we have more ways to find the gene clusters that produce these substances, and clone them so they can produce more," says Bill Gerwick, an Oregon State University marine biochemist who studies blue-green algae from the Caribbean and the South Pacific. Recently, molecular biologist Craig Venter, president of the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives, began sequencing the DNA of every microbe in the Sargasso Sea, a region of the Atlantic Ocean.

Most "discoveries" don't pan out, either because test-tube results don't translate to real-world problems or beneficial compounds also may produce harmful side effects. As a result, perhaps only one or two out of every hundred compounds that reach the preclinical testing stage yields a potential pharmaceutical-after anywhere from 5 to 30 years. "Both the beauty and the downfall of these compounds is that they are exotic and complicated," says Chris Ireland, a University of Utah marine chemist.

A score of compounds derived from marine sources are being tested in clinical trials: one such compound, trabectedin, has been isolated from Ecteinascidia turbinata, a Mediterranean and Caribbean tunicate, whose colonies look like translucent orange grapes. Apharmaceutical company based in Spain, PharmaMar, is testing a drug, Yondelis, from this compound against several cancers. Another compound, contignasterol, is the source of a potential treatment for asthma being developed by a Canadian company, Inflazyme. The drug, based on a substance found in a Pacific sponge, Petrosia contignata, reportedly produces fewer side effects than current medications and can be swallowed instead of inhaled.

In the United States, a marine-derived drug that has been extensively tested for the treatment of chronic pain is Prialt. It is based on venom from a species of Pacific cone snail, whose poisonous harpoonlike stingers can paralyze and kill fish and humans. At least 30 people have died from conesnail attacks. Biochemist Baldomero Olivera of the University of Utah, who grew up in the Philippines and collected cone-snail shells as a boy, conducted the research leading to the discovery of the drug. He and his colleagues extracted a peptide from the venom of Conus magus (the magician's cone). "I thought that if these snails were so powerful that they could paralyze the nervous system, smaller doses of the compounds from the venoms might have beneficial effects," Olivera said. "Cone snails are of exceptional interest because the molecules they make are very small and simple, easily reproducible." In January, the Irish pharmaceutical firm Élan announced that it had completed advanced trials on Prialt in the United States. The drug, acting on nerve pathways to block pain more effectively than traditional opiates, appears to be 1,000 times more potent than morphine-and, researchers say, lacks morphine's addictive potential and exhibits a reduced risk of mind-altering side effects. One research subject, a Missouri man in his 30s who had suffered from a rare soft-tissue cancer since he was 5, reported to scientists at the Research Medical Center in Kansas City that his pain had abated within days of receiving Prialt. About 2,000 people have received the drug on an experimental basis; Élan plans to submit the data to the FDA for review and possible approval of Prialt, with a decision expected as early as next year. Other researchers are investigating the potential of cone-snail venoms, the components of which may number up to 50,000, in the treatment of nervous system conditions such as epilepsy and stroke.

Two antiviral drugs already on the market might be said to have been inspired by marine product chemistry: Acyclovir, which treats herpes infections, and AZT, which fights the AIDS virus, HIV. Those drugs can be traced to nucleosidic compounds that chemist Werner Bergmann isolated from a Caribbean sponge, Cryptotheca crypta, in the 1950s. "These are arguably the first marine drugs," says David Newman.

Marine-derived products other than drugs are already on the market. For example, two essential fatty acids present in human breast milk are also manufactured by a marine microalga, Cryptocodinium cohnii. Infant-formula makers use the algae-derived substances in some products. An enzyme synthesized from microbes found in undersea hydrothermal vents has proved highly effective in decreasing underground oil viscosity-and therefore increasing oil-well yields. Already, automakers are using one compound, based on glues made by the common blue mussel, to improve the adherence of paint; sutureless wound closure and dental fixatives are other possible applications. New varieties of artificial bone grafts, produced from ground-up corals, possess a porosity that precisely mimics that of human bone tissue. Agroup of compounds with anti-inflammatory properties called pseudopterosins have been extracted from a Caribbean gorgonian (a soft coral) and are included in an antiwrinkle cream marketed by Estée Lauder.

With the field of marine products chemistry showing such promise, a new breed of hybrid scientist has emerged: scuba-diving chemists. They generally spend half their time shaking beakers in a lab, the other half scraping strangelooking things off underwater rocks. Jim McClintock, a University of Alabama at Birmingham marine-chemical ecologist, collects bottom-dwellers in the waters off Antarctica. A perhaps unexpected diversity of organisms thrives there, with more than 400 species of sponges alone. To explore that environment, McClintock and his co-investigators have to pry open sea ice eight to ten feet thick with chain saws, drills or even dynamite. They wear 100 pounds or so of diving gear, including special kinds of super-insulated diving suits, known as dry suits, and descend into deep, narrow holes-often with as little as a two-inch clearance in front of their noses. In this hermetic world, the water may appear pitch-black or gloriously illumined, depending on how much snow covers the ice overhead. Leopard seals, 1,000-pound predators that devour penguins and other seals, may demonstrate a hungry interest in the divers. Mc- Clintock recalls seeing a behemoth charging menacingly and surfacing through a crack in the ice to swipe at researchers topside. "I try to stay out of the food chain," he says. Back at the University of Alabama, McClintock's colleague, molecular biologist Eric Sorscher, screens Antarctic organisms for compounds; he has identified a few that may be tested for the treatment of cystic fibrosis. The Pennsylvania- based pharmaceutical firm Wyeth recently detected antibiotic and anticancer properties in extracts from Antarctic sponges and tunicates.

Tropical waters pose their own hazards. Bill Gerwick, who refers to the blue-green algae he studies as "pond scum," says that his specimens prefer the same cloudy bays favored by stinging jellyfish, saltwater crocodiles and sharks. His colleague, Phil Crews, a natural products chemist at the University of California at Santa Cruz, finds people more threatening. In New Guinea in 1999, villagers, fearing that the scientists were invading fishing grounds off their island, attacked Crews with spears and slingshots. Another time, a machine-gun-wielding gang of young Indonesian soldiers boarded Crews' research vessel and demanded money. "Basically," Crews says, "we came up with enough cash."

He has identified more than 800 compounds in tropical sponges. One promising source of cancer-fighting substances are the compounds called bengamides, after Fiji's Beqa (pronounced "Benga") Lagoon, where Crews collected the original specimens. Gerwick has isolated a substance he christened kalkitoxin, from an algae collected off the Caribbean island of Curaçao; he says it has potential as a treatment for some neurodegenerative disorders and possibly cancer, as well as pain control.

Technology is opening the deep sea to bioprospecting. In the past, biologists hoping to collect samples from waters as deep as 3,000 feet could do little more than sink trawl nets and hope for the best, says Amy Wright, an organic chemist at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution in Fort Pierce, Florida. But since 1984, Wright has collected from inside the Johnson-Sea-Link I and II, deep-water submersibles equipped with robotic claws and high-powered vacuums. They have enabled her to gather delicate sea fans and a host of other organisms intact, mainly from the Atlantic and the Caribbean. "It's always a surprise," she says. Acompound from a Caribbean sponge, Discodermia, "is now in clinical trials for the treatment of pancreatic and other cancers."

The deep sea has turned up leads in the quest for oceanic pharmaceuticals. ASan Diego-based biotechnology firm, Diversa, announced two years ago that its scientists had sequenced the genome of Nanoarchaeum equitans, an unusual organism collected from a seafloor vent north of Iceland. The organism, smaller and simpler and with less DNA than any known bacterium, is being studied as a possible minuscule, living factory for the production of marine chemicals. "We can use what we learn from Nanoarchaeota to figure out something very basic: which genes are essential and which we can do without," says Michiel Noordewier, a researcher at Diversa. "This is the smallest genome ever found."

Suddenly a squadron of bluefish, converging in a feeding frenzy, thrashed out of the waves and began snapping at the swells' surfaces-a reminder of the astonishing variety of marine life around the Gulf of Mexico oil platforms. A few minutes later, the divers surfaced one at a time and clambered onto the deck-just in time. What looked like a shark fin had flashed in the water 100 feet off starboard. They hauled the specimen bag out of the water and onto a table.

What spilled out of the laundry-basket-size bag was mind-boggling. Amid a matrix of varicolored, agglutinated barnacles-their shells opening and closing, working overtime in the air-grew tiny tube worms; strands of telesto coral, branching like miniature caribou antlers; and hydroids, filter-feeding organisms resembling ferns. Juan López- Bautista, the expedition's algae expert, picked through the tangled mass with long tweezers, teasing out flywing-shaped specks of purple and green. Each tiny dot, he said, probably contains several algae species. Tiny crabs, brittle stars, shrimplike amphipods and delicate, green marine worms wriggled from the muddy gunk. Something bigger wriggled into view. Rainey quickly stepped back. Abright red bristleworm, a centipede-like creature spiked with poison-tipped spines poking out from its six-inch-long body, dropped onto the deck. "Don't touch that," he said. "It will hurt like hell. At the very least." He snared the bristleworm with long tweezers and gingerly placed it in a jar, saying: "We're going to grind up your gut and see what kind of microbes you have."

The research team failed to find one creature they had particularly sought: the bryozoan Bugula neritina, a tiny, tentacled aquatic organism that looks like a piece of moss the size of a quarter. It yields a compound currently being tested as a cancer drug; the compound originally was identified by George Pettit, an organic chemist at Arizona State University, who collected the bryozoans off western Florida. He found that compounds from the Bugula demonstrated anticancer properties, and in 1981 he isolated a compound he christened bryostatin. Lab tests have found that it attacks various malignancies. It is currently undergoing advanced human trials in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

More than two decades after Pettit's discovery, scientists at Harvard and in Japan have synthesized small amounts of the complex molecule, which is in great demand. Researchers in California have discovered populations of Bugula growing on West Coast oil platforms. The team was hoping to find a Bugula source in the Gulf. But not today.

Early the next morning, as the day dawned clear, the spree floated in a calm sea alongside 82-A, a big platform lying 27 miles out in clear blue water. We could see the divers 20 feet down. A Portuguese man-of-war floated by; schools of feeding fish, extending on all sides for perhaps half an acre, flashed at the surface. Afour-foot-long barracuda cruised in to investigate. Then the divers began to resurface; within minutes, everyone had climbed aboard. The take this time was also dazzling-extravagant pink conchs, spiny pureblack sea urchins the size of half dollars, and mats of what the biologists call "scunge," gooey conglomerations of bacteria and algae.

The next platform, lying also in blue water, offered up bell-like corals, tiny purple-and-white octopuses and-at last-a few strands of seemingly unimpressive reddish mossy stuff, possibly the much-sought bryozoan Bugula neritina. "We'll have to wait until we get back to the lab," said Rainey. "Alot of these things look alike."

By the time we reached the fourth platform, we'd returned to silty waters opaque with Mississippi River mud, which may well also contain contaminants ranging from petroleum runoff and mercury from power-plant emissions to raw sewage. Perhaps most toxic to marine life is chemical fertilizer, washed from farms upriver. In fact, many environments where aquatic life once thrived have simply vanished; estuaries and bays along much of the coastal United States were long ago filled or otherwise destroyed. Ironically, oil platforms some distance from shore may constitute the last best hope for some marine organisms.

The Spree reached the last site, 23-EE, just as a strong wind rose out of the south. The crew secured the vessel to the rig, but the Spree would not stay put; the wind and an opposing north current battered us at our mooring. What to do? The divers said they could avoid being crushed by the tossing boat-but only if they could discern the vessel from below, which was unlikely. About 60 feet down, visibility would be nil. Yet nobody wanted to quit. "Well, what's the worst that could happen?" asked one diver. "We get lost, or die." Everyone laughed nervously.

"Well, if you get lost, I'll look for you," Captain Frank said. "For a couple of hours at least, depending on how much money you left in your wallet." More anxious laughter.

"What about the surface sample?" inquired Rainey.

"That is a no-go," said Mark Miller, one of the divers. Whitecapped four-foot swells dashed against the platform legs, which were studded with several inches of razor-sharp mussel shells.

"Let's abandon this," Rainey said. "It's not worth the risk." He may be a landlubber microbiologist, but he respected the power of the ocean. Whatever promising slime was down there, it would have to wait for another day.

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smithsonian.com Fred Rainey was standing aboard the 100-foot-long spree about seven miles off the marshy Louisiana coast, rocking on four-foot swells. All around, oil-rig platforms rose like skyscrapers from the heaving waters of the Gulf of Mexico's "oil patch," a 64,000-square-mile stretch of shallow ocean where 4,000 steel platforms pump enough petroleum to account for one-third of the nation's production.

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The oceans cover approximately 70% of the earth's surface. Consider the size of the ocean. Its surface area is about 360 million square kilometers.Throughout these depths, there is life. Not much of it has been explored.

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*the ocean is critical to human life more then 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe comes from it.
drives our weather provides a
nutritious food supply, and is a key
more than 28 million jobs in the united states alone.'

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*The challenges met while exploring the ocean can provide the impetus for new technologies and engineering innovations that can be applied in other situations, allowing us to respond more effectively in the face of an ocean crisis, such as an while facing the challenges of the ocean can provide something that could help us invent something new ,and engineering innovations that allow people to respond better in an ocean crisis. oil spill                     *While facing the challenges of the ocean can provide something that could help us invent something new ,and engineering innovations that allow people to respond better in an ocean crisis.

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Exploration is key to increasing our understanding of the ocean, so we can more effectively manage, conserve, regulate, and use ocean resources that are vital to our economy and to all of our lives.

Despite the fact that the ocean covers approximately 70% of Earth's surface and plays a critical role in supporting life on our planet, from the air we breathe and the food we eat to weather and climate patterns, our understanding of the ocean remains limited.

Ocean exploration is about making discoveries, searching for things that are unusual and unexpected. As the first step in the scientific process, the rigorous observations and documentation of biological, chemical, physical, geological, and archaeological aspects of the ocean gained from exploration set the stage for future research and decision-making.

Through ocean exploration, we collect data and information needed to address both current and emerging science and management needs. Exploration helps to ensure that ocean resources are not just managed, but managed in a sustainable way, so those resources are around for future generations to enjoy. Exploration of the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone is important for national security, allowing us to set boundaries, protect American interests, and claim ocean resources.

Unlocking the mysteries of ocean ecosystems can reveal new sources for medical therapies and vaccines, food, energy, and more as well as inspire inventions that mimic adaptations of deep-sea animals. Information from ocean exploration can help us understand how we are affecting and being affected by changes in Earth's environment, including changes in weather and climate. Insights from ocean exploration can help us better understand and respond to earthquakes, tsunamis, and other hazards.

The challenges met while exploring the ocean can provide the impetus for new technologies and engineering innovations that can be applied in other situations, allowing us to respond more effectively in the face of an ocean crisis, such as an oil spill. And, ocean exploration can improve ocean literacy and inspire young people to seek critical careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

As a species, humans are naturally inquisitive - curiosity, desire for knowledge, and quest for adventure motivate modern explorers even today. And if all of these examples don't provide enough reasons to explore the ocean, well, ocean exploration is also just cool (if you need it: proof).

The NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research is the only federal program dedicated to exploring the deep ocean, closing prominent gaps in our basic understanding of U.S. deep waters and the seafloor and delivering the ocean information needed to strengthen the economy, health, and security of our nation.

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What Is Ocean Exploration and Why Is It Important?: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research

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Despite the fact that the ocean covers approximately 70% of Earth's surface and plays a critical role in supporting life on our planet, from the air we breathe and the food we eat to weather and climate patterns, our understanding of the ocean remains limited.

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* “Today, NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research has an annual budget of less than $20 million. By comparison, the NASA Curiosity rover Mars mission alone cost $2.5 billion.”
* With a low cost the ocean should be easier to explore. We can save money and save lives.

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It's World Oceans Day, and the oceans need our help more than ever. In 2016, Inverse made the case for giving ocean exploration the same attention we give space exploration. This is especially true as U.S. President Donald Trump threatens to dismantle NASA's Earth science mission. The original article is published below.

Fifty years ago, John Steinbeck made an open plea in the pages of Popular Science magazine: Give ocean exploration the same attention and resources as space science. It was 1966 and the Space Race was on. In less than three years, Neil Armstrong would set foot on the moon. Steinbeck saw the huge, giant leap coming, but he also saw the ocean from his shorefront property in Sag Harbor, Long Island.

"I know enough about the sea to know how pitifully little we know about it. We have not, as a nation and a world, been alert to the absolute necessity of going back to the sea for our survival," he wrote. "I do not think $21 billion, or a hundred of the same, is too high a price for a round-trip ticket to the moon. But it does seem unrealistic, unreasonable, romantic, and very human that we indulge in these passionate pyrotechnics when, under the seas, three-fifths of our own world and over three-fifths of our world's treasure is unknown, undiscovered, and unclaimed."

His point remains trenchant today, perhaps more so than over the last few decades. With a second space age ramping up, the government is sending spacecrafts past Pluto, landing them on comets, and occupying an increasing amount of cis-lunar space. Still, the very best maps of the deep ocean have an average resolution of three miles. That's one data point, and then nothing, until another data point three miles away. To put that into perspective, our best map of Mars has a resolution of 330 feet.

While many federal government departments have some role in ocean science, not least of all NASA, there was no organization specifically dedicated to pushing our knowledge of the unexplored deep until 2001. Today, NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration and Research has an annual budget of less than $20 million. By comparison, the NASA Curiosity rover Mars mission alone cost $2.5 billion.

While Steinbeck was generous in his assessment of the value of space exploration, others have not been so kind. Take from NASA's budget and give it to a new, beefed up NOAA, argues Amitai Etzioni in Issues in Science and Technology.

"The basic reason is that deep space - NASA's favorite turf - is a distant, hostile, and barren place, the study of which yields few major discoveries, and an abundance of overhyped claims," he writes. The oceans, he points out, have greater potential for solving real human problems, including climate change, and providing access to new sources of food, energy, and medicine.

Stephen Hawking, and others, speak of space colonization as the last hope for humanity, but it will be harder to survive in an environment that wasn't responsible for a billion years of evolutionary pressure. How plausible is it that we would have the technology and capability to terraform a foreign planet to our specifications, but not to maintain our existence on Earth?

Steinbeck's claim is also bold: When humans destroy the land, we will retreat to the oceans from whence we came long before we turn to deep space. But it's not more outlandish.

The good news, for advocates of ocean exploration, is that a NASA-like organization for the seas might not be as crucial a requirement as it was 50 years ago. Just as private space flight has taken off over the past decade, so too are non-governmental bodies becoming more interested in the big blue. The Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE has offered $7 million to the team who can build an autonomous robot, that can map the seafloor in high resolution, while taking pictures of the environment and identifying archaeological, biological, and geological features.

The larger goal is to get a proper map of the ocean by 2030, including volcanoes, reefs, and an estimated three million shipwrecks. Using current technology, the mapping effort would cost $3 billion. That's largely because current techniques involve the physical presence of a ship, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars to operate, even on days when the vessel is just traveling to and from the mapping location.

The XPRIZE will go to a robot that can be launched from air or shore, and travel autonomously through the deepest and farthest corners of the ocean, relaying back the data. It seems fantastical - until you remember what NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has accomplished 35 million miles away from mission command.

XPRIZE recently announced that 32 teams from 22 countries have joined the competition. "The technologies that they are proposing are phenomenal, including drones that can go from air to sea, swarms of robots - it's going to be very exciting," Jyotika Virmani with XPRIZE tells Inverse.

And excitement is part of the point. The Cold War may have primed the Space Race between the United States and Russia, but we continue to invest in deep space exploration because it amazes us.

"One of the impacts is to inspire the public, to show people that we are essentially living on this undiscovered planet," says Virmani. "It has aliens - it has creatures that can glow in the dark, and creatures that can conduct electricity and camouflage themselves."

When Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 crashed into the ocean in 2014, the resulting search led to the discovery of two new seafloor volcanoes. "That's just the tip of the iceberg," she says. "There is a 3,600 square mile area of coral reef that was discovered and announced earlier this year. That's the size of the country of Cyprus. There are so many things out there that we've yet to find."

Virmani says she'd like to see funding for ocean exploration increase across private and public organizations, with coordination between the two, much like the emerging space industry. "We're opening up a new era of ocean exploration."

Space may be wondrous, but humans cannot live or breathe without oceans. That may apply on Mars as much as it does here on Earth.

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It's World Oceans Day, and the oceans need our help more than ever. In 2016, Inverse made the case for giving ocean exploration the same attention we give space exploration. This is especially true as U.S. President Donald Trump threatens to dismantle NASA's Earth science mission. The original article is published below.

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*“While the world below the ocean’s surface is more than twice the size of the world above it and contains an estimated 94 percent of the space where life can exist on Earth, only 5 percent of the world’s oceans have been fully explored.”
*We have not explored much of the ocean and it is 94% of space where life can exist. we need the ocean to survive, without it no life form on earth could survive.

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This week marks the 10th Annual World Oceans Day, a global confluence of ocean-awareness events intended to bring our oceans the level of public attention they deserve. As we both have had the opportunity to explore a fair amount of our globe's seas, on this occasion we'd like to share our excitement and our vision for the future.

Ray Dalio (@raydalio) is the founder of Bridgewater Associates and the OceanX initiative. Marc Benioff (@benioff) is CEO and chair of Salesforce, as well as founder of the Benioff Ocean Initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

To us, the ocean is humanity's most important and most under-examined treasure. While the world below the ocean's surface is more than twice the size of the world above it and contains an estimated 94 percent of the space where life can exist on Earth, only 5 percent of the world's oceans have been fully explored.

The ocean is critical to human life-more than 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe comes from it. It drives our weather, provides a nutritious food supply, and is a key source of commerce, supporting more than 28 million jobs in the United States alone. For those reasons, it deserves our reverence and protection. Instead, humans neglect it and treat it like a toilet that we overfish from.

We believe ocean exploration is more exciting and more important than space exploration. Yet it only receives about one-one hundredth as much funding. We want to change that by showing people the ecosystems and underwater habitats across the globe that are brimming with unexplored environments filled with species that have evolved in ways we cannot possibly imagine. By discovering and understanding these ecosystems, we can unlock cures to diseases, grow new foods, discover new medicines, create new industries, and fully understand our planet. The possibilities are endless, if we choose to open the door to them.

Thanks to profound technological advancements in recent years, we now have the potential to open these doors like never before. Using new sensors, submarine technology, and autonomous vehicles, humans have the opportunity to advance the public's understanding and appreciation of the ocean, much as the development of scuba equipment and underwater cameras allowed ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau to captivate the world 50 years ago.

Using many of these technologies, the BBC's recent Blue Planet II inspired a new generation of explorers to turn toward the ocean and prodded public policymakers to introduce new measures to prevent plastics pollution. When it sets sail next year, the Alucia2, a new vessel funded by OceanX, will be the most advanced vessel designed for both media production and cutting-edge scientific research, bringing the excitement of ocean discovery to the world as broadcast and digital programs and in real time.

Exploring our oceans is key to protecting them. As renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle has said, "Far and away, the biggest threat to the ocean is ignorance." Exploration is the key to ending that ignorance and making the oceans accessible, tangible, and exciting to the broader world so that people will understand and protect them.

Creating such understanding will ensure we don't lose the richness of the biological assets in our oceans before they are even discovered. Protected areas, such as Papahānaumokuākea and the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monuments, serve as savings accounts that protect strategic areas of our ocean for future exploration and discovery while simultaneously producing more fish, food, and income for fisheries.

Even as we begin to explore the most remote reaches of our oceans, we are finding them sullied-with trash detected at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of our ocean, and floating in the most remote regions of Antarctica. This signals we must act now to ensure we discover more than plastic bottles during this next generation of ocean exploration.

There are many great government and non-profit organizations, philanthropists, scientists, and entrepreneurs doing critical and unheralded work to protect our oceans-but they need more support. Not just in the form of funding, but in the form of public energy and momentum.

One positive sign is that world leaders at the G7 Summit in Canada today are prioritizing ocean health, calling for aggressive measures to combat plastic pollution and climate change. We need this interest to translate into a firm G7 stance on oceans. And we need this ripple of leadership to turn into a tidal wave of public, private, and community support for securing the healthy future for our oceans upon which we all depend.

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It's Time for the Next Wave of Ocean Exploration and Protection

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This week marks the 10th Annual World Oceans Day, a global confluence of ocean-awareness events intended to bring our oceans the level of public attention they deserve. As we both have had the opportunity to explore a fair amount of our globe's seas, on this occasion we'd like to share our excitement and our vision for the future.

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*Deep-sea scientists are probably more comfortable moving back and forth between these two fields than most other scientists, given   that the vast majority (and we do mean vast) of the deep-sea is unexplored.   *We should keep on exploring the ‘’deep sea’’ more because not all of it hasn’t been explored yet.

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This post is co-authored by Craig McClain and Al Dove

Among both scientists and non-scientists there is skepticism about James Cameron's "Deep Sea Challenge" dive into the Marianas Trench on Sunday and what it really achieved for society. We keep getting asked: why should we do this and what do we get from Cameron going to the deep? Deep-sea exploration is expensive, difficult and dangerous. Why should anyone go, let alone he?

One of our more cynical colleagues on Twitter stated:

"Rich asshole builds his own sub and dives really deep. Yawn. Gullible scios and journos mistake such vanity tourism for important discovery"

And one of us [Dr. M] admits that he was also skeptical of the importance of all of this to begin with, but that was before the exciting events of Sunday evening.

Yesterday, we spoke to some of the reasons why Cameron's dive was important, while acknowledging that some of these reasons may not be direct scientific gain. And this brings us to the difference between exploration and science. Deep-sea scientists are probably more comfortable moving back and forth between these two fields than most other scientists, given that the vast majority (and we do mean vast) of the deep-sea is unexplored. In other words, deep-sea science is still in its infancy. Exploration is for when we lack any systematic knowledge about a subject and seek to gather in this most simple fashion. We seek to define the unknown. Pure science, on the other hand, has a more explicit goal of the eventual prediction of pattern and process that arises out of the testing of formal hypotheses. Of course, the two need not be a dichotomy; exploration can be a subset of science. Some take a stricter view in which science is restricted to deductive approaches (theory yielding hypotheses that are tested with observation and experiment). We, on the other hand, feel the inductive approach is a valuable part of science as well (observations eventually emerging into a pattern that yields hypotheses).

There is precedent for this in other fields. Consider alpha taxonomy (the description of new species), for example, which is where one of us [para_sight], started his scientific career. The first step to cataloguing new biodiversity is to go out there and collect some samples and take a look; it really is that simple! As the taxonomy builds, you have to go out ever further and look ever closer, but the process is the same and it is generally NOT built on specific hypotheses, despite how it may be stated in grant applications ;) Alpha taxonomy is exploratory research in exactly the same way as Cameron's deep sea mission. He dove to the Marianas Trench in search of new life, whereas para_sight dissected the guts of fish species that had never been necropsied before in search of new species of parasitic worms. We don't think anyone would argue that taxonomy is not science, so why would deep sea exploration not also be?

" Which is a better investment, science or exploration? The question is almost as old as the space program itself, and answering it won´t get any easier as humans move toward establishing a lunar base. But could science be an inevitable outgrowth of exploration?"
- David Tenenbaum

We agree with this view that exploration is simply the inductive first step towards more formal deductive science, which brings us to first reason why we should explore:
1. Exploration is about observation, the first step of the scientific process. Without exploration we do not have the intellectual fodder for scientific discovery 2. Exploration is about knowledge, about expanding our horizons and answering questions that we haven't even thought of asking yet 3. Through exploration 4. Exploration leads to technological and engineering innovation as we strive to meet new challenges. we can gain knowledge about earth, life, and potentially other planets. 5. To explore the unknown means discovery with ramifications unseen.
We may not even know what we should be asking! :

Thus:
6. Through exploration, nations become great.
Of course exploration also has immediate and tangible benefits. Doing new things means doing them in new ways and, necessity being the mother of invention, technology advances hand in hand with exploration:
7. A humans we are a naturally curious species, we deny our humanity if we do not explore the unknown world around us. 8. Exploration allows for the unification of humanity around great achievement. 9. Exploration allows us to inspire others to be explorers and scientists. 10. We should explore because it's cool, awesome, and amazing.
And of course exploration through all of the above means we cannot begin to fathom what it may yield:

"Throughout history, the great nations have been the ones at the forefront of the frontiers of their time. Britain became great in the 17th century through its exploration and mastery of the seas. America's greatness in the 20th century stemmed largely from its mastery of the air."- NASA Administrator Michael Griffin. ""I believe America should look to its future - and consider what that future will look like if we choose not to be a spacefaring nation."

Undoubtedly one metric of society is its culture of exploration of new frontiers in space, technology, Earth but in the arts and sciences in general. Put simply:

We should visit the moon or trench simply because we have not been there before or not been there enough. To not go is to deny our very nature. We should go because we are driven to rise to a challenge presented:

To meet the obstacles, both seen and unforeseen, of exploration requires the dissolution of borders, barriers, languages, and dispute. We must cooperate.

Importantly, how do we excite the public and youth about technology and science? How many kids wanted to be astronauts when they grow up? How many wanted to be marine biologists because they saw Cousteau exploring the oceans? If we want to inspire in education and get away from standardized tests and No Child Left Behind, we need to offer new heroes and new dreams. STEM may be about math, technology, and science, but it all starts with inspiration:

As we write this we feel that the most important one, which we save for last, nobody ever states seriously. Sure all these others are important but they do not touch the core of why exploration is important. We will no longer be ashamed or apologetic about the fact that:

And given the opportunity any of us would have traded places with Cameron.

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10 Reasons Why We Should Explore The Deep

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This post is co-authored by Craig McClain and Al Dove Among both scientists and non-scientists there is skepticism about James Cameron's "Deep Sea Challenge" dive into the Marianas Trench on Sunday and what it really achieved for society.

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*“The ocean is critical to human life—more than 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe comes from it. It drives our weather, provides a nutritious food supply, and is a key source of commerce, supporting more than 28 million jobs in the United States alone.”
*We shoud research the ocean so that we can survive as humans! We need the ocean!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This week marks the 10th Annual World Oceans Day, a global confluence of ocean-awareness events intended to bring our oceans the level of public attention they deserve. As we both have had the opportunity to explore a fair amount of our globe's seas, on this occasion we'd like to share our excitement and our vision for the future.

Ray Dalio (@raydalio) is the founder of Bridgewater Associates and the OceanX initiative. Marc Benioff (@benioff) is CEO and chair of Salesforce, as well as founder of the Benioff Ocean Initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

To us, the ocean is humanity's most important and most under-examined treasure. While the world below the ocean's surface is more than twice the size of the world above it and contains an estimated 94 percent of the space where life can exist on Earth, only 5 percent of the world's oceans have been fully explored.

The ocean is critical to human life-more than 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe comes from it. It drives our weather, provides a nutritious food supply, and is a key source of commerce, supporting more than 28 million jobs in the United States alone. For those reasons, it deserves our reverence and protection. Instead, humans neglect it and treat it like a toilet that we overfish from.

We believe ocean exploration is more exciting and more important than space exploration. Yet it only receives about one-one hundredth as much funding. We want to change that by showing people the ecosystems and underwater habitats across the globe that are brimming with unexplored environments filled with species that have evolved in ways we cannot possibly imagine. By discovering and understanding these ecosystems, we can unlock cures to diseases, grow new foods, discover new medicines, create new industries, and fully understand our planet. The possibilities are endless, if we choose to open the door to them.

Thanks to profound technological advancements in recent years, we now have the potential to open these doors like never before. Using new sensors, submarine technology, and autonomous vehicles, humans have the opportunity to advance the public's understanding and appreciation of the ocean, much as the development of scuba equipment and underwater cameras allowed ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau to captivate the world 50 years ago.

Using many of these technologies, the BBC's recent Blue Planet II inspired a new generation of explorers to turn toward the ocean and prodded public policymakers to introduce new measures to prevent plastics pollution. When it sets sail next year, the Alucia2, a new vessel funded by OceanX, will be the most advanced vessel designed for both media production and cutting-edge scientific research, bringing the excitement of ocean discovery to the world as broadcast and digital programs and in real time.

Exploring our oceans is key to protecting them. As renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle has said, "Far and away, the biggest threat to the ocean is ignorance." Exploration is the key to ending that ignorance and making the oceans accessible, tangible, and exciting to the broader world so that people will understand and protect them.

Creating such understanding will ensure we don't lose the richness of the biological assets in our oceans before they are even discovered. Protected areas, such as Papahānaumokuākea and the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monuments, serve as savings accounts that protect strategic areas of our ocean for future exploration and discovery while simultaneously producing more fish, food, and income for fisheries.

Even as we begin to explore the most remote reaches of our oceans, we are finding them sullied-with trash detected at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of our ocean, and floating in the most remote regions of Antarctica. This signals we must act now to ensure we discover more than plastic bottles during this next generation of ocean exploration.

There are many great government and non-profit organizations, philanthropists, scientists, and entrepreneurs doing critical and unheralded work to protect our oceans-but they need more support. Not just in the form of funding, but in the form of public energy and momentum.

One positive sign is that world leaders at the G7 Summit in Canada today are prioritizing ocean health, calling for aggressive measures to combat plastic pollution and climate change. We need this interest to translate into a firm G7 stance on oceans. And we need this ripple of leadership to turn into a tidal wave of public, private, and community support for securing the healthy future for our oceans upon which we all depend.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
It's Time for the Next Wave of Ocean Exploration and Protection

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This week marks the 10th Annual World Oceans Day, a global confluence of ocean-awareness events intended to bring our oceans the level of public attention they deserve. As we both have had the opportunity to explore a fair amount of our globe's seas, on this occasion we'd like to share our excitement and our vision for the future.

# data[].attributes.body
*The ocean is critical to human life more than 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe comes from itIt drives our weather, provides a nutritious food supply, and is a key source of commerce, supporting more than 28 million jobs in the United States alone.

*we need to pay attention and take care the ocean because like in the text says 50 % of our oxygen and we could use the money to clean the ocean

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This week marks the 10th Annual World Oceans Day, a global confluence of ocean-awareness events intended to bring our oceans the level of public attention they deserve. As we both have had the opportunity to explore a fair amount of our globe's seas, on this occasion we'd like to share our excitement and our vision for the future.

Ray Dalio (@raydalio) is the founder of Bridgewater Associates and the OceanX initiative. Marc Benioff (@benioff) is CEO and chair of Salesforce, as well as founder of the Benioff Ocean Initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

To us, the ocean is humanity's most important and most under-examined treasure. While the world below the ocean's surface is more than twice the size of the world above it and contains an estimated 94 percent of the space where life can exist on Earth, only 5 percent of the world's oceans have been fully explored.

The ocean is critical to human life-more than 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe comes from it. It drives our weather, provides a nutritious food supply, and is a key source of commerce, supporting more than 28 million jobs in the United States alone. For those reasons, it deserves our reverence and protection. Instead, humans neglect it and treat it like a toilet that we overfish from.

We believe ocean exploration is more exciting and more important than space exploration. Yet it only receives about one-one hundredth as much funding. We want to change that by showing people the ecosystems and underwater habitats across the globe that are brimming with unexplored environments filled with species that have evolved in ways we cannot possibly imagine. By discovering and understanding these ecosystems, we can unlock cures to diseases, grow new foods, discover new medicines, create new industries, and fully understand our planet. The possibilities are endless, if we choose to open the door to them.

Thanks to profound technological advancements in recent years, we now have the potential to open these doors like never before. Using new sensors, submarine technology, and autonomous vehicles, humans have the opportunity to advance the public's understanding and appreciation of the ocean, much as the development of scuba equipment and underwater cameras allowed ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau to captivate the world 50 years ago.

Using many of these technologies, the BBC's recent Blue Planet II inspired a new generation of explorers to turn toward the ocean and prodded public policymakers to introduce new measures to prevent plastics pollution. When it sets sail next year, the Alucia2, a new vessel funded by OceanX, will be the most advanced vessel designed for both media production and cutting-edge scientific research, bringing the excitement of ocean discovery to the world as broadcast and digital programs and in real time.

Exploring our oceans is key to protecting them. As renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle has said, "Far and away, the biggest threat to the ocean is ignorance." Exploration is the key to ending that ignorance and making the oceans accessible, tangible, and exciting to the broader world so that people will understand and protect them.

Creating such understanding will ensure we don't lose the richness of the biological assets in our oceans before they are even discovered. Protected areas, such as Papahānaumokuākea and the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monuments, serve as savings accounts that protect strategic areas of our ocean for future exploration and discovery while simultaneously producing more fish, food, and income for fisheries.

Even as we begin to explore the most remote reaches of our oceans, we are finding them sullied-with trash detected at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of our ocean, and floating in the most remote regions of Antarctica. This signals we must act now to ensure we discover more than plastic bottles during this next generation of ocean exploration.

There are many great government and non-profit organizations, philanthropists, scientists, and entrepreneurs doing critical and unheralded work to protect our oceans-but they need more support. Not just in the form of funding, but in the form of public energy and momentum.

One positive sign is that world leaders at the G7 Summit in Canada today are prioritizing ocean health, calling for aggressive measures to combat plastic pollution and climate change. We need this interest to translate into a firm G7 stance on oceans. And we need this ripple of leadership to turn into a tidal wave of public, private, and community support for securing the healthy future for our oceans upon which we all depend.

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It's Time for the Next Wave of Ocean Exploration and Protection

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This week marks the 10th Annual World Oceans Day, a global confluence of ocean-awareness events intended to bring our oceans the level of public attention they deserve. As we both have had the opportunity to explore a fair amount of our globe's seas, on this occasion we'd like to share our excitement and our vision for the future.

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*Unlocking the mysteries of the ocean can reveal new medical resources, such as therapies and vaccines, even food and energy. Even new inventions can be made from the incredible things in our ocean.

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Exploration is key to increasing our understanding of the ocean, so we can more effectively manage, conserve, regulate, and use ocean resources that are vital to our economy and to all of our lives.

Despite the fact that the ocean covers approximately 70% of Earth's surface and plays a critical role in supporting life on our planet, from the air we breathe and the food we eat to weather and climate patterns, our understanding of the ocean remains limited.

Ocean exploration is about making discoveries, searching for things that are unusual and unexpected. As the first step in the scientific process, the rigorous observations and documentation of biological, chemical, physical, geological, and archaeological aspects of the ocean gained from exploration set the stage for future research and decision-making.

Through ocean exploration, we collect data and information needed to address both current and emerging science and management needs. Exploration helps to ensure that ocean resources are not just managed, but managed in a sustainable way, so those resources are around for future generations to enjoy. Exploration of the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone is important for national security, allowing us to set boundaries, protect American interests, and claim ocean resources.

Unlocking the mysteries of ocean ecosystems can reveal new sources for medical therapies and vaccines, food, energy, and more as well as inspire inventions that mimic adaptations of deep-sea animals. Information from ocean exploration can help us understand how we are affecting and being affected by changes in Earth's environment, including changes in weather and climate. Insights from ocean exploration can help us better understand and respond to earthquakes, tsunamis, and other hazards.

The challenges met while exploring the ocean can provide the impetus for new technologies and engineering innovations that can be applied in other situations, allowing us to respond more effectively in the face of an ocean crisis, such as an oil spill. And, ocean exploration can improve ocean literacy and inspire young people to seek critical careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

As a species, humans are naturally inquisitive - curiosity, desire for knowledge, and quest for adventure motivate modern explorers even today. And if all of these examples don't provide enough reasons to explore the ocean, well, ocean exploration is also just cool (if you need it: proof).

The NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research is the only federal program dedicated to exploring the deep ocean, closing prominent gaps in our basic understanding of U.S. deep waters and the seafloor and delivering the ocean information needed to strengthen the economy, health, and security of our nation.

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What Is Ocean Exploration and Why Is It Important?: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research

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Despite the fact that the ocean covers approximately 70% of Earth's surface and plays a critical role in supporting life on our planet, from the air we breathe and the food we eat to weather and climate patterns, our understanding of the ocean remains limited.

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We should deeper on ocean because there are many species in the ocean. Also there is a cure for HIV in the ocean so it is possible that we could find another cure.

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This post is co-authored by Craig McClain and Al Dove

Among both scientists and non-scientists there is skepticism about James Cameron's "Deep Sea Challenge" dive into the Marianas Trench on Sunday and what it really achieved for society. We keep getting asked: why should we do this and what do we get from Cameron going to the deep? Deep-sea exploration is expensive, difficult and dangerous. Why should anyone go, let alone he?

One of our more cynical colleagues on Twitter stated:

"Rich asshole builds his own sub and dives really deep. Yawn. Gullible scios and journos mistake such vanity tourism for important discovery"

And one of us [Dr. M] admits that he was also skeptical of the importance of all of this to begin with, but that was before the exciting events of Sunday evening.

Yesterday, we spoke to some of the reasons why Cameron's dive was important, while acknowledging that some of these reasons may not be direct scientific gain. And this brings us to the difference between exploration and science. Deep-sea scientists are probably more comfortable moving back and forth between these two fields than most other scientists, given that the vast majority (and we do mean vast) of the deep-sea is unexplored. In other words, deep-sea science is still in its infancy. Exploration is for when we lack any systematic knowledge about a subject and seek to gather in this most simple fashion. We seek to define the unknown. Pure science, on the other hand, has a more explicit goal of the eventual prediction of pattern and process that arises out of the testing of formal hypotheses. Of course, the two need not be a dichotomy; exploration can be a subset of science. Some take a stricter view in which science is restricted to deductive approaches (theory yielding hypotheses that are tested with observation and experiment). We, on the other hand, feel the inductive approach is a valuable part of science as well (observations eventually emerging into a pattern that yields hypotheses).

There is precedent for this in other fields. Consider alpha taxonomy (the description of new species), for example, which is where one of us [para_sight], started his scientific career. The first step to cataloguing new biodiversity is to go out there and collect some samples and take a look; it really is that simple! As the taxonomy builds, you have to go out ever further and look ever closer, but the process is the same and it is generally NOT built on specific hypotheses, despite how it may be stated in grant applications ;) Alpha taxonomy is exploratory research in exactly the same way as Cameron's deep sea mission. He dove to the Marianas Trench in search of new life, whereas para_sight dissected the guts of fish species that had never been necropsied before in search of new species of parasitic worms. We don't think anyone would argue that taxonomy is not science, so why would deep sea exploration not also be?

" Which is a better investment, science or exploration? The question is almost as old as the space program itself, and answering it won´t get any easier as humans move toward establishing a lunar base. But could science be an inevitable outgrowth of exploration?"
- David Tenenbaum

We agree with this view that exploration is simply the inductive first step towards more formal deductive science, which brings us to first reason why we should explore:
1. Exploration is about observation, the first step of the scientific process. Without exploration we do not have the intellectual fodder for scientific discovery 2. Exploration is about knowledge, about expanding our horizons and answering questions that we haven't even thought of asking yet 3. Through exploration 4. Exploration leads to technological and engineering innovation as we strive to meet new challenges. we can gain knowledge about earth, life, and potentially other planets. 5. To explore the unknown means discovery with ramifications unseen.
We may not even know what we should be asking! :

Thus:
6. Through exploration, nations become great.
Of course exploration also has immediate and tangible benefits. Doing new things means doing them in new ways and, necessity being the mother of invention, technology advances hand in hand with exploration:
7. A humans we are a naturally curious species, we deny our humanity if we do not explore the unknown world around us. 8. Exploration allows for the unification of humanity around great achievement. 9. Exploration allows us to inspire others to be explorers and scientists. 10. We should explore because it's cool, awesome, and amazing.
And of course exploration through all of the above means we cannot begin to fathom what it may yield:

"Throughout history, the great nations have been the ones at the forefront of the frontiers of their time. Britain became great in the 17th century through its exploration and mastery of the seas. America's greatness in the 20th century stemmed largely from its mastery of the air."- NASA Administrator Michael Griffin. ""I believe America should look to its future - and consider what that future will look like if we choose not to be a spacefaring nation."

Undoubtedly one metric of society is its culture of exploration of new frontiers in space, technology, Earth but in the arts and sciences in general. Put simply:

We should visit the moon or trench simply because we have not been there before or not been there enough. To not go is to deny our very nature. We should go because we are driven to rise to a challenge presented:

To meet the obstacles, both seen and unforeseen, of exploration requires the dissolution of borders, barriers, languages, and dispute. We must cooperate.

Importantly, how do we excite the public and youth about technology and science? How many kids wanted to be astronauts when they grow up? How many wanted to be marine biologists because they saw Cousteau exploring the oceans? If we want to inspire in education and get away from standardized tests and No Child Left Behind, we need to offer new heroes and new dreams. STEM may be about math, technology, and science, but it all starts with inspiration:

As we write this we feel that the most important one, which we save for last, nobody ever states seriously. Sure all these others are important but they do not touch the core of why exploration is important. We will no longer be ashamed or apologetic about the fact that:

And given the opportunity any of us would have traded places with Cameron.

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10 Reasons Why We Should Explore The Deep

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This post is co-authored by Craig McClain and Al Dove Among both scientists and non-scientists there is skepticism about James Cameron's "Deep Sea Challenge" dive into the Marianas Trench on Sunday and what it really achieved for society.

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* Ocean exploration is about making discoveries and also find things that can help us and also help clean the oceans because we n

eed the oxygen
*

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*“Through ocean exploration, we collect data and information needed to address both current and emerging science and management needs.”

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Exploration is key to increasing our understanding of the ocean, so we can more effectively manage, conserve, regulate, and use ocean resources that are vital to our economy and to all of our lives.

Despite the fact that the ocean covers approximately 70% of Earth's surface and plays a critical role in supporting life on our planet, from the air we breathe and the food we eat to weather and climate patterns, our understanding of the ocean remains limited.

Ocean exploration is about making discoveries, searching for things that are unusual and unexpected. As the first step in the scientific process, the rigorous observations and documentation of biological, chemical, physical, geological, and archaeological aspects of the ocean gained from exploration set the stage for future research and decision-making.

Through ocean exploration, we collect data and information needed to address both current and emerging science and management needs. Exploration helps to ensure that ocean resources are not just managed, but managed in a sustainable way, so those resources are around for future generations to enjoy. Exploration of the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone is important for national security, allowing us to set boundaries, protect American interests, and claim ocean resources.

Unlocking the mysteries of ocean ecosystems can reveal new sources for medical therapies and vaccines, food, energy, and more as well as inspire inventions that mimic adaptations of deep-sea animals. Information from ocean exploration can help us understand how we are affecting and being affected by changes in Earth's environment, including changes in weather and climate. Insights from ocean exploration can help us better understand and respond to earthquakes, tsunamis, and other hazards.

The challenges met while exploring the ocean can provide the impetus for new technologies and engineering innovations that can be applied in other situations, allowing us to respond more effectively in the face of an ocean crisis, such as an oil spill. And, ocean exploration can improve ocean literacy and inspire young people to seek critical careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

As a species, humans are naturally inquisitive - curiosity, desire for knowledge, and quest for adventure motivate modern explorers even today. And if all of these examples don't provide enough reasons to explore the ocean, well, ocean exploration is also just cool (if you need it: proof).

The NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research is the only federal program dedicated to exploring the deep ocean, closing prominent gaps in our basic understanding of U.S. deep waters and the seafloor and delivering the ocean information needed to strengthen the economy, health, and security of our nation.

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What Is Ocean Exploration and Why Is It Important?: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research

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Despite the fact that the ocean covers approximately 70% of Earth's surface and plays a critical role in supporting life on our planet, from the air we breathe and the food we eat to weather and climate patterns, our understanding of the ocean remains limited.

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*Ocean exploration is about making discoveries, searching for things that are unusual and unexpected. *We should explore more of the ocean because we could make shocking discoveries that we never saw or knew about.

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Exploration is key to increasing our understanding of the ocean, so we can more effectively manage, conserve, regulate, and use ocean resources that are vital to our economy and to all of our lives.

Despite the fact that the ocean covers approximately 70% of Earth's surface and plays a critical role in supporting life on our planet, from the air we breathe and the food we eat to weather and climate patterns, our understanding of the ocean remains limited.

Ocean exploration is about making discoveries, searching for things that are unusual and unexpected. As the first step in the scientific process, the rigorous observations and documentation of biological, chemical, physical, geological, and archaeological aspects of the ocean gained from exploration set the stage for future research and decision-making.

Through ocean exploration, we collect data and information needed to address both current and emerging science and management needs. Exploration helps to ensure that ocean resources are not just managed, but managed in a sustainable way, so those resources are around for future generations to enjoy. Exploration of the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone is important for national security, allowing us to set boundaries, protect American interests, and claim ocean resources.

Unlocking the mysteries of ocean ecosystems can reveal new sources for medical therapies and vaccines, food, energy, and more as well as inspire inventions that mimic adaptations of deep-sea animals. Information from ocean exploration can help us understand how we are affecting and being affected by changes in Earth's environment, including changes in weather and climate. Insights from ocean exploration can help us better understand and respond to earthquakes, tsunamis, and other hazards.

The challenges met while exploring the ocean can provide the impetus for new technologies and engineering innovations that can be applied in other situations, allowing us to respond more effectively in the face of an ocean crisis, such as an oil spill. And, ocean exploration can improve ocean literacy and inspire young people to seek critical careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

As a species, humans are naturally inquisitive - curiosity, desire for knowledge, and quest for adventure motivate modern explorers even today. And if all of these examples don't provide enough reasons to explore the ocean, well, ocean exploration is also just cool (if you need it: proof).

The NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research is the only federal program dedicated to exploring the deep ocean, closing prominent gaps in our basic understanding of U.S. deep waters and the seafloor and delivering the ocean information needed to strengthen the economy, health, and security of our nation.

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What Is Ocean Exploration and Why Is It Important?: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research

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Despite the fact that the ocean covers approximately 70% of Earth's surface and plays a critical role in supporting life on our planet, from the air we breathe and the food we eat to weather and climate patterns, our understanding of the ocean remains limited.

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* "The information from ocean explorations can establish the baseline information needed to better understand environmental change"
*If we research the oceans we could save them and protect the world.

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As we all probably know before, the ocean covers approximately about 70% of the Earth's surface. This fact then makes it understandable that there are so many parts of the vast water body that haven't been explored or find out yet.

Not only because the vast body, the ocean is also hard to reach on many parts since some parts of the ocean are very deep that human has yet been able to descend to the depth.

According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, ocean exploration is about making discoveries, searching for things that are unusual and unexpected through a disciplined, systematic, and includes rigorous observations and documentation of biological, chemical, physical, geological, and archaeological aspects of the ocean.

In this article, we are going to learn more about what are actually the effects of ocean exploration.

See also: Herbivores in the Pacific Ocean

Filling Gaps in the Ocean Information

Findings from the ocean exploration are very fundamental to fill in the gaps on the blank information regarding the ocean. The information acquired through the explorations then can be used by the scientists to decide what to do on ocean issues and to come up with some ideas regarding the ocean.

See also: Types of Atlantic Ocean Crabs

The information from ocean explorations can establish the baseline information needed to better understand environmental change, NOAA explained. The findings can help scientists to address both current situations and to predict the future situations that may emerge. The information then can be used to know what to do in order to protect the ocean, make them still around for the future generations to enjoy.

See also: Types of Ocean Birds

Since the information about the deep sea are still very little, like what we have said above, the new findings especially regarding the deep sea are very important to all of us especially the scientists. Through the information, the experts then can know the how the situation is down there and learn what to do when there are deep sea disasters since we haven't known much yet due to the lack of information before. For example, it may give us some valuable information about predicting the earthquakes and tsunamis.

See also: Fishes in Atlantic Ocean

The new information gained through the exploration regarding the deep sea can also give us knowledge about what are available down there, how the life forms lives, and find out how us, human, can survive down there or make a good use of the depth's resources. This is very important since as the time goes by, the number of people escalated and so does the need for foods and other human needs.

The deep-sea then can be one of the resources for us to rely on to fulfill the needs such as food, energy, etc. Deep-sea findings can even unlock some new resources from the ecosystems that might give benefits for the medical drugs and other products.

See also: Types of Jellyfish in the Atlantic Ocean

The continuous exploration on the ocean can keep us informed about the ocean's conditions from time to time. The findings from it then can help us compare the ocean's conditions from time to time. Especially now that the climate change is happening, we can keep track the changes that happens to the ocean and what might affect our life.

Vice versa, we can also know what parts of our life that may cause harm to the ocean that will most likely impact us, human, too in the end and then fix those parts for the ocean's sake.

See also: Types of Ocean Storms

Encourage People to Study Further about the Ocean

One of the effects of ocean exploration, although may seem unimportant, is that it can inspire the young people to seek careers in the fields that may contribute to the ocean literacy such as mathematics, engineering, science, and technology.

As we said before, although this may seem unimportant but it actually is since it young people can have fresh insights to the ocean literacy as the different generations may have develop different and unique ways of thinking. The thoughts of challenging the deep ocean may taunt people more to innovate technology and engineering breakthroughs that can even be applied in other situations too.

See also: Types of Small Ocean Fish

Relatively Cheaper Than Other Explorations

The ocean exploration, although must have cost a lot, but it can be considered as relatively cheaper than the other, let's say space explorations. What's more to it is that ocean exploration may even be relatively easier than those of the space (although we are aware that some parts of the ocean are too deep that the human can't even reach it yet, but in general, ocean is obviously reachable than the space).

See also: Characteristics Ocean Liners

Ocean exploration may lead us to some artefacts that are from years and years ago. These artefacts then can be studied by the archeologists to find out more about the ancient life, and add valuable information that may be very useful for us humanbeing, also to better understand the history.

See also: Endangered Species of the Ocean

As there are good effects, we can't deny the fact that there are some negative effects of ocean exploration too as not all people can use the ocean wisely. Here are some of the negative effects (9-15) that may or have emerge from the ocean exploration:

Ocean exploration can also lead people to locate the parts in the ocean that are actually full of resources for us, human. Although these resources may be very useful to us, the ocean mining can also lead to many harmful events and may as well damage the ocean itself if not done in the right way or if it gets overdone.

See also: Climate of the Ocean

10. Irresponsible Ocean Creature Captures

Ocean exploration may also help us to locate places in the ocean that are full of the fish that we can consume in our everyday life. However, just like the point before this, continuous exploration may lead some people to capture ocean creatures that are not supposed to be captured and even lead to overfishing.

See also: General Characteristics of Coastal Ocean

11. Exploitation of Ocean Creature

Besides of irresponsible captures, ocean exploration may even lead to exploitation on some ocean creatures or marine life forms. For example, the overexposing of the great barrier reef that may cause damages to the reef due to the people who visits it that don't really understand how to deal with them and so many other factors.

12. Ocean Treasures Destruction

Although the artefact findings from the exploration may give benefits to us, it can also lead to the destruction of them if the information doesn't used wisely by some people. The information of new findings may lead people to be greedy and take them from their supposed place just for the benefits of some people. This is definitely not we want as some unmoved artefacts are left just the way it is as it may be fragile or considered as protected sites.

13. Ocean Waste

Ocean explorations may also lead people to some parts of the ocean that are considered unreachable and pop the idea that it is save for them to dump wastes in the ocean. Although some ocean waste is done in very rural places in the ocean, it is possible for them to ruin the ecosystems around the area.

14. Waste of Money, Time, and Energy

Some people or experts do ocean explorations to find out whether it is possible to live in it, just as how people do the same for space explorations. However, many thinks that the idea and act of this might just lead to the waste of money, time, and energy since human most-likely will not be able to bear the pressure and will only leads to the fact that the ocean is inhabitable for human.

15. Become Increasingly Expensive Too

Although in the positive points it is said that ocean exploration is cheaper than the space, the ocean exploration is becoming exceedingly expensive as the time goes by. A simple survey for ocean exploration can cost to as much as $50 million.

What makes the ocean exploration's spending become more unworthy is due to the fact that the exploration might just lead to nothing. As once we get deeper under 50 miles off shore, we will mostly greet by featureless mud only. Whereas in the space, although we may as well be greeted by nothing, but we can at least identify some targets to place probes or telescopes.

As we can see, there are some good and bad effects caused by the ocean exploration. However, the bad effects can certainly be reduced if us, human, were to do the exploration in the correct way and will use the information that will be find wisely. We hope that this article has been helpful to make you understand better about the ocean exploration and inspire you to do good things for the ocean.

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15 Effects of Ocean Exploration: The Pros and Cons - DeepOceanFacts.com

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As we all probably know before, the ocean covers approximately about 70% of the Earth's surface. This fact then makes it understandable that there are so many parts of the vast water body that haven't been explored or find out yet.

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