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FATHOMING THE GULF STREAM - Nature's Pharmacy and Eyes In The Sea MISSION DISPATCH 1 • 08/18/02 Today's Weather - images courtesy of NOAA & RSMAS Dispatch by Brian Cousin - HARBOR BRANCH Oceanographic Institution The way we are learning about our oceans is changing in many ways. Not only is the technology to fathom the depths evolving, but so are the methods and practices associated with this important work. The research is becoming more collaborative and multi-disciplinary, as science teams embrace everything from the growing inter-relatedness of their work, to the economies of joining up to make the most out of every research dollar. Ocean exploration is now more accessible to anyone who shares an interest-not only in the end products of data, papers and policy, but in the excitement of exploration itself. 
On August 17, NOAA's (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Office of Ocean Exploration and HARBOR BRANCH teamed up to begin the third leg of NOAA's Islands in the Stream 2002 mission. The goals are to search for new organisms that may offer hope of pharmaceutical potential to fight diseases, and to discover how animals in the dark depths see and are seen in their struggle for survival. HARBOR BRANCH researchers from the Division of Biomedical Marine Research, and the Visual Ecology and Bioluminescense departments will be exploring the South Atlantic Bight off South Carolina, Georgia and Florida using the Research Vessel Seward Johnson and the Johnson-Sea-Link II. Diving to sites never seen before by any person, the teams will endeavor to characterize the environment, collect new samples and data, and share the experience in near real-time, online. "This is total exploration", says John Reed, senior scientist with the Biomedical Marine Research group. The first research site is about 120 miles offshore. There is a large depression on Stetson's deep-water Lophelia reef, on the eastern edge of the Blake Plateau surrounded by pinnacles 200' to 500' high. "There's been some seismic work and surface work done on this area, but no one's gone down to actually see it," Reed continues. Trawls have shown evidence that this is a deep-sea Lophelia coral habitat - possibly lithoherms with a hard rock cap and unknown material underneath that may include shell debris and other calcareous material, or perhaps Lophelia reef, where the tall pinnacles have formed over tens of thousands of years of coral growing and breaking down on itself. That is one question Reed would like to begin to answer. First, though, we must locate the site with a great degree of precision before anyone can climb in the sub to check it out. Relying on older documentation of position of this little 
known site, determined through Loran A and side-scan sonar, could put
the sub down more than a mile off target. And so, right now and through
the rest of the night, teams of 2 researchers will man the bridge; one
watching the fathometer for changes in depth, the other watching the sub
tracker, ready to record GPS positions, as the ship makes 5-mile by
1/2-mile sweeps over the area.
The submersible will take Chief Scientist Dr. Shirley Pomponi, Reed, and the rest of her team, to collect specimens from the bottom. It will shuttle Dr. Edie Widder and her new Eye-in-the-Sea camera into the depths to record the phenomenon of bioluminescence. And it will take Dr. Tammy Frank to the seafloor to set special traps to capture animals and bring them to the surface in total darkness for studies of visual morphology and ecology. Joined by collaborators from as far away as Australia, Russia and Sweden, armed with a battery of equipment to deploy over the side and labs filled with computers and high technology, the next 11 to 12 days promises to be full of 'round the clock marine science action. Stay on board for the discovery here @Sea, and on NOAA's web site at oceanexplorer.noaa.gov. It truly is total exploration! 
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