The Last Dive? Funding for Human Expeditions in the Ocean May Have Run Aground

[n2doc]

by Tony Dokoupil Jan 14, 2013 12:00 AM EST

It’s mid-morning, five miles off the coast of Hawaii, and the surface world suddenly feels like mere imagination, a theory in a water-logged science journal somewhere. Through the small round windows of Pisces IV, one of the deepest-diving subs in the world, our only reality is dark, airless, and teeming with unseen life.

We are sock-footed and smushed into a seven-foot steel sphere: this writer, the sub’s pilot, and Sylvia Earle, perhaps the most accomplished oceanographer since Jacques Cousteau. At 77, she is the grande dame of American ocean science and exploration. But since the moment we closed the hatch, she’s been grinning like a schoolkid, calling out the changes outside our window: “Blue ... bluer ... blueissimo.” When we hit bottom, she cups her hands over her mouth and peers into the twilight. “Is anybody home?” she calls and, dropping her voice into a cartoonish baritone, answers her own question. “YEESSS,” she says. “ALL OF US.”

For the next six hours we are skimming the seabed, throwing light on an animal-filled terrain of boulders and slopes, cliffs and ravines. We are slimed by passing squid, eyeballed by crabs the size of small dogs, and ignored by fish that walk the ocean floor like something from the pages of Dr. Seuss.

Officially, we are on the hunt for black coral, the longest-living animal known to science, a predator that kills by slipping over other organisms, like a latex glove over a hand. Scientists believe the husk left inside may hold secrets to the path of climate change. But this is virgin ocean, never before explored by humankind, and just plain wandering is useful work, too.

more

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/01/13/the-last-dive-funding-for-human-expeditions-in-the-ocean-may-have-run-aground.html

Well, the US has its priorities set, folks. We really do need more of those $350 million/piece stealth fighter jets to keep us safe from the terrorist air force. Or something like that. Sacrifices must be made.

[phantom power]

1. doing our level best to turn into a 3rd world nation

[Scuba]

2. Say it ain't so!!!

[LongTomH]

3. The U.S. was, repeat was, a leader in science and engineering for most of the 20th Century

We're in danger of losing that lead.

We fail to construct a Superconducting Supercollider and Europe goes on to complete the Large Hadron Collider, so the world's scientists go to CERN.

NASA and ESA propose a joint ExoMars mission to search for traces of life on Mars; then, the U.S. pulls out because Congress won't appropriate enough money for space science.

We're still a very innovative country; but, how long will that carry us without support for the sciences?

[AverageJoe90]

4. This is almost too surreal to be believeable, TBH.

Indeed, why in the hell are we STILL cutting spending for potentially important scientific endeavors like ocean exploration, instead of making this stuff more of a priority? We're supposed to be one of the most scientifically advanced countries on Earth, right? Let's start acting like it again!