WEBVTT

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Deck standing by for launch.

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And winds still about 19. Winds have dropped to 11 or 12. So it’s gusty. Yeah.

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We are 1,000 miles northwest of Honolulu, inside of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.

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Pilot has control. Pull the pin.

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This is an extremely large marine protected area, it actually extends for over 362,000 square kilometers.

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It is one of the largest marine protected areas in the world.

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So the average depths of the ocean are over 3,000 meters deep. And it’s places that we know nothing about.

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So fundamental processes about how the planet works and how life works;

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the answers are likely to be found down here in the deep water.

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Everything appears to happen a lot slower.

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Things grow slower, live longer, mature later in life.

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And that’s why these ecosystems are so vulnerable.

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If you were to disturb them, it would take a very, very long time for it to recover.

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That’s exactly what we’re trying to do on these missions,

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is to try to identify where some of the most vulnerable communities of these deep-sea corals are,

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so we can protect them with appropriate conservation measures.

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So we are about 20 miles outside the boundaries of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, just south of it.

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And this is something that we are, as managers of the area,

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also very interested in seeing both what’s inside and what’s outside the Monument and how these resources might be connected.

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So that's very valuable information in order to be able to manage the area appropriately.

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Looking at the larger scale of the Pacific,

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how are some of these places that are separated by very large geographic distances, are they connected?

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How are the faunas of these places either similar or different?

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And so, yeah the Okeanos Explorer is going to spend time throughout many places in the Pacific over the course of three years,

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so really getting at some places that are very, very far apart,

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and then trying to understand biogeographical patterns.