A new congressionally mandated report released by the National Research Council said Tuesday that more effort needs to be put toward researching oceans and its resources.
The research committee, sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, suggested that a non-federal organization should be formed to oversee a research program that would increase the exploration of undiscovered ocean resources.
By encouraging international participation, such efforts could lead to the discovery of new species, ecosystems, energy sources, seafloor features, pharmaceutical products and artifacts, as well as improve the understanding of the role oceans play in climate change.
“It is difficult to predict what discoveries are to come … but it is clear that ocean exploration will improve the accuracy of our predictions of global climate change [and] produce new products that will benefit humanity,” the committee report read. The committee was chaired by John Orcutt, deputy director of the Scripps Institutional of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego.
U.S. Congressional members, particularly Rep. Jim Greenwood, R-Pa., pushed for this report and welcomed the findings. The committee suggested that given the limited resources in many other countries, it would be practical to begin with a U.S. program that would include foreign representatives and serve as a model for other countries.
Once other nations establish their own programs, groups of them could then collaborate on research and pool their resources under international agreements.
“The United States should lead by example,” Orcutt said.
University of Wisconsin atmospheric and oceanic science professor Zhengyu Liu said researching the ocean in this manner is important because the ocean has huge effects on global climate. He said an understanding of how and why the ocean is a huge heat and carbon dioxide reservoir could be a great advancement in science.
Unlike studying the earth and the atmosphere, oceanic exploration is very difficult and expensive, requiring an advanced program that the report suggests, Liu said.
“There’s no better alternative,” Liu said. “It’s very difficult. We need more regular, consistent data.”
UW faculty focus on what role the ocean plays in global warming, mostly using computer models, which simulates ocean patterns, both past and present. Liu said it is “pretty effective,” but they still have a long way to go on more quantitative measures.
UW also analyzes data collected by other researchers.
“Even though we’re not living in the ocean, it’s becoming more and more vital to our economic life and a bigger player in the climate,” Liu said.
Most of the current U.S. funding for ocean research goes toward projects that plan to revisit earlier-explored sites or go toward improving the understanding of known processes. The committee says it should be put into exploratory oceanography.
Another inhibitor toward this kind of research comes from funding bureaucracy, in which grants are usually allocated to chemists, biologists or physical scientists, rather than to teams of researchers representing a variety of scientific fields.
The cost of the proposed program will be approximately $270 million the first year, in order to purchase a dedicated research ship and a “modest” fleet of underwater vessels. Annual operating costs for the program would be about $100 million, according to the report.
