OldBlackDog
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‘There’s so much we don’t know’: How Canadian scientists will try to solve the secrets of the deep ocean
The water off North America’s Atlantic coast holds an ocean’s worth of untold riddles.
Now, Canada has signed on to a month-long, transnational scouting mission to try to solve some of them. Around two dozen Canadian scientists will board the CCGS Hudson in Halifax on July 14, sailing across the North Atlantic to explore the “deep ocean” — anything deeper than 1,000 m.
The Hudson will chart a long southern “transect” from Nova Scotia to Bermuda, to track marine life along the entire route. The Canadians will visit the Sargasso Sea, an ocean patch near Bermuda where all sorts of aquatic species spawn and cohabit. And they will explore a few areas of interest closer to home.
There, they will try to resolve a few key questions. How does an ecosystem of globally unique glass sponges, known as Russian Hats, sustain itself in a conservation area off Halifax? Why do bottlenose whales congregate at The Gully, an underwater canyon by Sable Island?
Why, in short, do certain marine species do certain things?
“We’ve kind of started out from that basis: Where do we need more information? If we had this, what could we do with it?” said Ellen Kenchington, the chief research scientist aboard the Hudson. She spoke with the National Post about the deep ocean’s enduring mystique, and the allure of chasing answers.
How much is known about the deep ocean?
Kenchington: We don’t have a lot of specifics. If you’re thinking in terms of the species that live there, almost every time we go out, we encounter something we haven’t seen before. There are new discoveries being made all the time.
“Deep” is sort of relative. We’ve been doing a lot of work over the last decade trying to increase our understanding down to the depths the fishing fleets operate. They can go to about 2,000 m. On the continental shoals, it’s probably less than 200 m.
There’s so much we don’t know. It’s such a huge ocean. We have an awareness of the types of ecosystems and habitats that can occur there, but even then, we’re making new discoveries, particularly related to bacterial life and things that are maybe harder to see unless you’re down there on the bottom.
What equipment are you using?
Kenchington: The Hudson is an amazing vessel. She’s the queen of the Coast Guard fleet. She’s 50 years old, but she’s just lovely to be on the water.
We have a multi-beam sounder , which will take fine-scale detail of depth across the sea floor. Nekton are funding a remotely operated vehicle, which will go down to 2,000 m. It has an arm, which means we can not only see the sea floor, but we can take samples. The Canadian Department of Natural Resources is lending us their drop camera, which will go down to 4,000 m.
We have a nice set of tools. What’s unusual about this mission is we’ll be using them all at once, to get an index of ocean health by measuring the water column and the sediment all at the same time in a few different places. We can get some baseline information.
You’ll be lowering CTD (conductivity, temperature and depth) instruments to study the ocean floor. What’s the deepest you’re planning to go with them?
Kenchington: Almost 6,000 m — certainly, it’s at least 5,000. We’ll be getting information on the deep-water masses that are there. Water’s layered when it’s that deep. The water can come from different places and even flow in different directions.
We’ll be going that deep all the way from Halifax to Bermuda, following traditional oceanographic lines. We can take these measurements and use them to help inform the larger work that’s going on related to the Gulf Stream, climate change — its effect on all of that. Doing this long line of casts to record the physical oceanographic features, that’s the protocol used to look at global warming issues.
What are you hoping to find?
Kenchington: No one was really interested in the sea floor two decades ago. I’m really interested in taking our research forward into the next phase.
Getting information over long stretches is really important. A lot of the work we do — and it’s particularly true on deep-sea floor work — you get detailed information from a tiny location. Being able to do this long transect to Bermuda, this will give us a better perspective on how common the processes we see are.
What do you think will be the toughest part of the mission?
Kenchington: It’s always a challenge anytime you go to sea. Anything could happen. We could have a hurricane. We could have a search-and-rescue call. We could have gear failures. We could have wonderful success on every mission. It’s just unknown. At least with this one, we’re doing so many interesting things, that even if half of it goes wrong, the other half will compensate in terms of the excitement and knowledge it’s going to generate.
A type of seaweed called sargassum floats freely in the Sargasso Sea, but Nekton is concerned that litter is also accumulating there because of water currents. Why is that area significant?
Kenchington: There’s a brown seaweed that grows along the inter-tidal rocks, and you can walk on it at low tide. In that same seaweed family, there’s a variety that has little air bladders that help it to float. It forms a big mass over the surface. It’s not continuous, but there’s an awful lot of it.
All of the eels in the North Atlantic Ocean go (to the Sargasso sea) to spawn, and then go back into the rivers from Europe and North America. Baby turtles use that as a nursing area. There’s specific life that uses that seaweed mat out in the middle of the ocean to live.
I can see that litter would congregate there. If things got stuck there, they would just kind of stay. Getting a tab on that is really going to be interesting.
Why should Canadians be interested in learning more about the deep ocean?
Kenchington: We know that ocean climate can affect the climate on land. Fish are a very important food source in Canada, despite the problems we’ve had with the collapse of some of the fisheries. We’ve got other fisheries that are really important, still, like lobster and shrimp. We have to learn more about their environment if we want to keep having sustainable fisheries and fishing communities.
If you live in Saskatchewan or Halifax or Iqaluit — everybody in Canada is somehow touched by the sea. No other country has three oceans, like we do. Although we’re not “ocean” kind of people in general, they do influence our lives. It’s a custodial responsibility, I think, for our waters.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Email: nfaris@postmedia.com | Twitter:
The water off North America’s Atlantic coast holds an ocean’s worth of untold riddles.
Now, Canada has signed on to a month-long, transnational scouting mission to try to solve some of them. Around two dozen Canadian scientists will board the CCGS Hudson in Halifax on July 14, sailing across the North Atlantic to explore the “deep ocean” — anything deeper than 1,000 m.
The Hudson will chart a long southern “transect” from Nova Scotia to Bermuda, to track marine life along the entire route. The Canadians will visit the Sargasso Sea, an ocean patch near Bermuda where all sorts of aquatic species spawn and cohabit. And they will explore a few areas of interest closer to home.
There, they will try to resolve a few key questions. How does an ecosystem of globally unique glass sponges, known as Russian Hats, sustain itself in a conservation area off Halifax? Why do bottlenose whales congregate at The Gully, an underwater canyon by Sable Island?
Why, in short, do certain marine species do certain things?
“We’ve kind of started out from that basis: Where do we need more information? If we had this, what could we do with it?” said Ellen Kenchington, the chief research scientist aboard the Hudson. She spoke with the National Post about the deep ocean’s enduring mystique, and the allure of chasing answers.
How much is known about the deep ocean?
Kenchington: We don’t have a lot of specifics. If you’re thinking in terms of the species that live there, almost every time we go out, we encounter something we haven’t seen before. There are new discoveries being made all the time.
“Deep” is sort of relative. We’ve been doing a lot of work over the last decade trying to increase our understanding down to the depths the fishing fleets operate. They can go to about 2,000 m. On the continental shoals, it’s probably less than 200 m.
There’s so much we don’t know. It’s such a huge ocean. We have an awareness of the types of ecosystems and habitats that can occur there, but even then, we’re making new discoveries, particularly related to bacterial life and things that are maybe harder to see unless you’re down there on the bottom.
What equipment are you using?
Kenchington: The Hudson is an amazing vessel. She’s the queen of the Coast Guard fleet. She’s 50 years old, but she’s just lovely to be on the water.
We have a multi-beam sounder , which will take fine-scale detail of depth across the sea floor. Nekton are funding a remotely operated vehicle, which will go down to 2,000 m. It has an arm, which means we can not only see the sea floor, but we can take samples. The Canadian Department of Natural Resources is lending us their drop camera, which will go down to 4,000 m.
We have a nice set of tools. What’s unusual about this mission is we’ll be using them all at once, to get an index of ocean health by measuring the water column and the sediment all at the same time in a few different places. We can get some baseline information.
You’ll be lowering CTD (conductivity, temperature and depth) instruments to study the ocean floor. What’s the deepest you’re planning to go with them?
Kenchington: Almost 6,000 m — certainly, it’s at least 5,000. We’ll be getting information on the deep-water masses that are there. Water’s layered when it’s that deep. The water can come from different places and even flow in different directions.
We’ll be going that deep all the way from Halifax to Bermuda, following traditional oceanographic lines. We can take these measurements and use them to help inform the larger work that’s going on related to the Gulf Stream, climate change — its effect on all of that. Doing this long line of casts to record the physical oceanographic features, that’s the protocol used to look at global warming issues.
What are you hoping to find?
Kenchington: No one was really interested in the sea floor two decades ago. I’m really interested in taking our research forward into the next phase.
Getting information over long stretches is really important. A lot of the work we do — and it’s particularly true on deep-sea floor work — you get detailed information from a tiny location. Being able to do this long transect to Bermuda, this will give us a better perspective on how common the processes we see are.
What do you think will be the toughest part of the mission?
Kenchington: It’s always a challenge anytime you go to sea. Anything could happen. We could have a hurricane. We could have a search-and-rescue call. We could have gear failures. We could have wonderful success on every mission. It’s just unknown. At least with this one, we’re doing so many interesting things, that even if half of it goes wrong, the other half will compensate in terms of the excitement and knowledge it’s going to generate.
A type of seaweed called sargassum floats freely in the Sargasso Sea, but Nekton is concerned that litter is also accumulating there because of water currents. Why is that area significant?
Kenchington: There’s a brown seaweed that grows along the inter-tidal rocks, and you can walk on it at low tide. In that same seaweed family, there’s a variety that has little air bladders that help it to float. It forms a big mass over the surface. It’s not continuous, but there’s an awful lot of it.
All of the eels in the North Atlantic Ocean go (to the Sargasso sea) to spawn, and then go back into the rivers from Europe and North America. Baby turtles use that as a nursing area. There’s specific life that uses that seaweed mat out in the middle of the ocean to live.
I can see that litter would congregate there. If things got stuck there, they would just kind of stay. Getting a tab on that is really going to be interesting.
Why should Canadians be interested in learning more about the deep ocean?
Kenchington: We know that ocean climate can affect the climate on land. Fish are a very important food source in Canada, despite the problems we’ve had with the collapse of some of the fisheries. We’ve got other fisheries that are really important, still, like lobster and shrimp. We have to learn more about their environment if we want to keep having sustainable fisheries and fishing communities.
If you live in Saskatchewan or Halifax or Iqaluit — everybody in Canada is somehow touched by the sea. No other country has three oceans, like we do. Although we’re not “ocean” kind of people in general, they do influence our lives. It’s a custodial responsibility, I think, for our waters.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Email: nfaris@postmedia.com | Twitter:
