The Plan to Create a 'Fitbit for the Oceans'

It is often said we know less about the ocean floor than we do about the surface of Mars—a concerning statistic given how important they are to humanity's survival.

This fall, however, an integrated infrastructure of sensor systems will sprawl, swim, and anchor itself across our oceans as part of the Oceans Observatories Initiative, a project 10 years in the making.

Funded by the National Science Foundation and managed by non-profit the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, the system is being put through final tests this summer and will be operational by the end of the year.

"We are on the cusp of a whole new era of oceanography," Sherri Goodman, president and CEO of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, said of OOI at a recent panel. "We are on the verge of wiring the ocean. This is going to change how we use our oceans and grow our global economy in a way that is beneficial to so many of us on the planet."

OOI consists of more than 800 cables, moorings, and autonomous underwater drones situated in seven locations in the North and South Atlantic and the Pacific. It will measure physical, chemical, geological, and biological variables in the ocean and seafloor, producing over 200 different kinds of data, including HD video and photos, as well as metrics on conductivity and temperature.

The huge new influx of data will be overseen by a cyberinfrastructure data management group at Rutgers University and ultimately distributed to the public in real time.

"We expect some strong scientific use, operational use, educational use, and just curiosity use, as all these instruments are starting to now report back in real time," said Lisa Clough, head of ocean section division of Ocean Sciences at the National Science Foundation.

One of the first sections of the system to get up and running, called the Cabled Array, is already deployed off the coast of Oregon and is connected to shore through an underwater, 900 kilometer high-power fiber optic cable. Seven primary nodes that distribute power to 17 junction boxes, which then relay power and communications to the attached instruments. The array also includes two cabled profiler moorings that rise from the ocean floor to the surface to take in data from varying depths.

The Cabled Array is the first US ocean observatory to span a tectonic plate, the Juan de Fuca plate, and seeks to gain insight into fluid-rock interactions, hydrothermal vents, plate-scale seismology, carbon cycling, large-scale currents and biological productivity.

In July, it documented an underwater volcano—an event that may have otherwise gone unnoticed if not for the new plugged-in seafloor.

Two more arrays in the US, the Endurance Array and Pioneer Array, are located off the coasts of Oregon/Washington and New England respectively and are set up in similar manners. These arrays monitor upwelling, a process in which water rises from the depths of the ocean to the surface; the amount of oxygen in the water; and shelf break fronts, the separation of warm, saline slope water from cool, fresh shelf water.

The remaining four arrays are distributed internationally, in the Irminger Sea off Greenland, Argentine Basin off the coast of Argentina, Southern Ocean near the South Pole, and Ocean Station Papa in the Gulf of Alaska. Those arrays will collect information on heat, moisture, and momentum to better understand major processes like climate and ocean circulation.

"We live in a very dynamic environment at the moment," Clough said. "As our planet is changing, we need to be out there 24/7 in as many locations as we can to be able to understand how are ecosystems are changing. It's a very exciting time, we need to be out there to be able to see all these changes going on to predict what the changes will be in the future."

Of course, OOI isn't the only effort to monitor and collect data on our oceans. People across government organizations, academia, and the private sector have worked for years to better understand the sea. In the 90s, the United States launched an effort to create a uniform record of ocean activity called the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS). Through that system, which OOI will contribute to, NOAA aggregates information from various contributors to create a meaningful body of data that can be used to predict and understand climate change and other phenomena.

In oceanography, the more data we can collect, the better. As a whole, NOAA collects about 20 terabytes of data each day, but director Rick Spinrad said on a recent panel even more is needed to truly understand the ocean.

"The real central point to unlocking the mystery of learning about the ocean is collecting data, collecting information about it," he said. "We still don't have enough information about all the processes, the changes at all scales, spaces and times."

Despite the expansive amount information provided by IOOS and similar programs, systems of the past have relied largely on less advanced and slower research methods like ship-based expeditions. OOI will incorporate new drone and cable technology that will allow information to be relayed to researchers in real time, improving the rate and scale of data collection to expand our knowledge in a big way.

This could mean clearer incentives for policies that protect our oceans as pollution and climate change threaten them, according to Stewart Patrick, director of the International Institutions and Global Governance Program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"If you are going to have a 'Fitbit for the oceans'––a real time group of sensors, you'll be measuring not just acidification but warming, oxygenation, pollution runoff, biochemical changes that are going on in the ocean," he said on a recent panel. "The ability to actually have that in real time, a Weather Channel for the oceans where you can begin to see how these things relate to each other, how particular organisms are adapting relative to others. When you get a much broader picture of the oceans, and then you can plan your public policy interventions accordingly."

Big data is certainly valuable when it comes to understand our oceans, but what really matters is what we do with it. Paul Bunje, senior director of Oceans at XPrize, a private contest which funds advancements in sensor technology, said he envisions a world where these projects that benefit the entire planet can be funded by private companies.

"There has always been a notion of, 'How do we scale this up without funding it through NOAA?' and really the only way to do that is create monetizable products through that data, something that is of value," he said.

That means allowing private businesses to create, purchase, and use the data the new technology produces. Such use of the OOI technology is out of the scope of the program itself, which focuses primarily on getting the current infrastructure up and running, but could be applied for through the NSF proposal process.

"Everything depends on what the oceans do, if we destroy them we are putting humanity at the risk," Bunje said. "Creating healthy oceans requires that people value them, and you can't just dictate it. You can value it in your heart, or you can value it in your pocketbook. We think both are necessary. We want people to have a connection but also an economic incentive to do the right thing."

Bunje said programs like these could work with fisheries to implement an early warning system for upwelling, the process where more acidic water comes to the surface from deep in the ocean and harms sensitive creatures in the hatcheries like oysters and shellfish. In the future, these companies will have more advanced warning to stop sucking in water from the sea before it becomes too acidic.

"It's like knowing to bring an umbrella because its raining today," Bunje said. "These are some of the services people have been looking for for a long time."

Zdenka said information like this is useful to private business, but even more important for getting everyday people to connect with the ocean.

"The biggest impediment to advancement is continuing to explain the issues we face, and helping people understand even though you can't see inside the ocean, it really affects everything we do," she said. "If we are able to show folks changing conditions, almost like the stock market, it makes our case better. It is tying the ocean to everything life is will allow us to make that connection better."

Hell or Salt Water is a series on Motherboard about exploring and preserving our oceans. Follow along here.