-: All right, aloha, everybody,
and welcome to our Third Thursday presentation for April.
And we are in Earth Week,
so leading up to day this Saturday.
So we have a great presentation for you today
with Dr. Daniel Wagner,
who works for Ocean Exploration Trust
and on aboard the E/V Nautilus.
So he'll give a presentation about the research season,
the 2023 research season, where the ship is going,
and what they're going to be highlighting for this year.
So thank you for joining us.
And just before we get started,
a couple logistical things.
If you are having problems with your audio,
make sure to check in the GoTo Webinar control panel,
there's a section on audio,
make sure that your speakers and your microphone
are selected to whatever,
whether using headphones or speakers,
make sure it's the right selection.
And if you do have any questions or problems
during the webinar,
please type that into the question bar
and we'll do our best to help you.
And if you have any questions
that hopefully we'll get to you at the end
for Dan to answer,
we will please type those into the question bar
and we'll do our best to answer those.
But before we get started,
in Hawai'i it's proper to open with protocols
to open our minds and spirits to this knowledge.
And with that,
I'm going to turn it over to Malia Evans
to open this space for us.
Over to you, Malia.
-: Aloha mai kākou!
Welcome to all of you and thank you for joining us.
So I will begin by setting that space
for that aʻo aku, aʻo mai,
that reciprocity of information and knowledge.
So I'm gonna turn off my camera
so you can enjoy the beautiful imagery.
(Malia chanting in Hawaiian)
(Malia speaking in Hawaiian)
-: Mahalo, Malia.
And again, thank you everybody for joining us.
We have people joining us from all across the world
and almost every continent.
And thank you for taking time out of your day
to learn more about what we're doing in the Pacific.
Before we get started,
a little bit about
our Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.
So we are a system of 15 national marine sanctuaries,
five proposed national marine sanctuaries,
and two marine national monuments across the United States.
So these are your National Marine Sanctuary system.
It includes places like the Monitor,
which is the first national marine sanctuary
on the East Coast of the United States.
Florida Keys, Flower Garden Banks in the Gulf of Mexico,
Monterey Bay, Olympic Coast in the West Coast,
and of course the area that we work in,
Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands
in Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary
all the way down to American Samoa.
And we actually have a new proposed
national marine sanctuary here in the Pacific.
For Earth Week, it seems like the timing
was very well planned for Earth Week,
but the largest protected area on the planet,
777,000 square miles, is being proposed in the Pacific
for the Pacific Remote Islands.
And we are accepting comments on this proposed sanctuary
through June 2nd, 2023.
If you click that QR code,
you can learn more and learn how to comment
on this proposed national marine sanctuary,
which is in the same area
as Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument.
So please go to that website to learn more
and learn how you can participate in this process.
But we work for (indistinct), Malia and I, and Dan.
Dan used to work for our office,
and he still does in kind of a way.
We are Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.
And at present, we are the largest fully protected area
on the planet, 582,000 square miles.
It's a vast area of the older Hawaiian Islands
or Kūpuna Hawaiian Islands,
which stretches from a hundred miles past Kaua'i,
all the way out to areas like Midway and Kure Atoll.
If you overlay this over the United States,
we cover an area from about New Orleans to Las Vegas.
So that's the whole Hawaiian archipelago,
but it's a vast area that we work to protect
and educate people about
and practice cultural practices and research
and many other things,
but we protect it for its special
and unique characteristics.
So Malia and I are your hosts for today.
I'm the education coordinator.
I work over here at Mokupāpapa Discovery Center in Hilo
and Malia is our O'ahu education and outreach person
working under the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation.
And here in Hilo,
we have a wonderful 30,000 square foot discovery center
all about the Northwestern Hawaiian Island
in Papahānaumokuākea.
So if you're in Hilo, please come visit us.
We have a beautiful 3,500 gallon saltwater aquarium
as well as exhibits in ʻŌlelo Hawai'i and English
and beautiful artwork, life size models,
information about shipwrecks, marine degree art exhibit.
So if you're in Hilo, please come to see us.
Tuesday through Saturday, nine to four,
we're open and we're free to the public.
But our national sanctuary systems
around the United States
protect the biodiversity of these special places,
provide shelter and protected spaces
for endangered and threatened species
like this green sea turtle and Hawaiian monk seal,
enjoying the moment at French Frigate Shoals, Lalo.
The cultural heritage in Papahānaumokuākea,
we have some incredible sacred sites
such as this Mokumanamana
which is a heiau or a ceremonial site on that island.
We also protect maritime heritage,
many shipwrecks throughout the system.
Some sites are really about the shipwrecks
such as Thunder Bay in the Great Lakes
and the Monitor on East Coast.
We conduct research in these areas
to better study and understand
the organisms that are living there and the habitats
and how we can better manage those places.
We monitor for things like changes
like human-driven changes, climate change,
marine debris impact, other things
and see what we can do to help mitigate those.
We also conduct research, resource protection efforts.
In the Florida Keys,
we have a really great program called Mission: Iconic Reefs
where they're out planting corals
in some of the damaged coral reef areas down there
and trying to restore several sites across the Florida Keys.
We conduct education programs such as this one
and outreach programs.
We had a really great outreach
at the Merrie Monarch Festival here in Hilo last week,
so we're still recovering from that
and really had a great,
lot of great interactions with people.
But we can't do any of this without our volunteers.
So if you are inclined,
please reach out and volunteer
at one of your local sanctuaries or contact us
to see if there are other ways that you can volunteer.
And again, we protect these places
for their natural and cultural values,
but also as places
where we can all go to reconnect with our own spirits
and reconnect with the natural world.
So they're very special places.
So today we are blessed with Daniel Wagner
to come talk to us about Ocean Exploration Trust.
So Dan serves as the chief scientist
for the Ocean Exploration Trust.
He's conducted field work on deep sea ecosystems since 2006
and has participated
in 27 multidisciplinary research expeditions,
exploring deep sea habitat throughout Indo-Pacific,
Atlantic, and Southern Ocean.
Dan grew up in Ecuador where at a young age,
he interned at Galapagos National Park
and experience where he developed a deep fascination
for nature in the ocean.
Then he moved to Hawai'i
where he earned a bachelor of science in biology
from Hawaiʻi Pacific University
and a masters, and PhD and PhD degrees at oceanography
from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa.
So currently, he works as the chief scientist
for Ocean Exploration Trust
and he is going tell us about their research season
in the Pacific and tell us how you can connect.
So over to you, Dan.
I'm gonna switch the presenter to you
and you should have control now.
I'm going turn off my camera.
Okay, looks good.
Over to you.
-: Perfect.
Well, thank you so much Andy and Malia
for that wonderful introduction.
It's an absolute privilege to be here and share with you
a little bit about our upcoming work ahead.
So we're just a few days
from the start of a jam-packed field season
that will bring Exploration Vessel Nautilus
to some of the most remote and spectacular places
around the Pacific.
And today I'm really gonna just provide an overview
about what our plants are for the field season,
and then really highlight how each and every one of you
can be part of our explorations.
But just as a bit of an introduction,
I know that for this audience and in general,
there's a growing realization and just awareness
that we live on a largely ocean planet,
but I think there's still a large portion of the population
that is not aware that how much of that ocean
is really remote, deep, unexplored, and completely unknown.
So for the...
This big part of our ocean that covers close
to three quarters of our surface of our planet,
only about 20% of that sea floor has been mapped
with modern technologies.
So all those areas there that you can see in this map
that are in those dark black colors,
these are all places where we don't yet have
good maps of the sea floor,
and this is a huge portion.
80% of it, we don't yet have good maps.
And if we look at the portion of the planet
that has been mapped,
has been imaged with modern technologies
such as submersibles
where we actually got video of the sea floor,
that shrinks to a much, much, much smaller portion.
A fraction of the percent of the sea floor
is all that we've really shed light on
and taken a close look at what's on the sea floor.
So there's this vast part of our planet
that we really know very little about.
And this is an issue for a lot of problems.
If you don't understand, 99% of your oceans,
you're not gonna really understand
how many things of our planet work.
And so exploring and doing work in these areas
really has tremendous benefits
for many different disciplines.
So exploration has really basic benefits
in terms of understanding how our planet works,
how our processes works,
things like nutrient cyclings, climate change.
You can't really predict and understand these processes
if you only have a very small knowledge
of a small part of the sea floor.
Also exploration has really applied benefits.
So it has a lot of implications for fishery
and resource management and conservation.
You can't really conserve or protect places
that you don't know,
or manage fisheries if you don't really know what's there.
And then it also has even more applied purposes
such as biotechnology and the development of new drugs.
Currently, the rates of new drug discoveries
derived from marine products is two to threefold higher
than what you have from terrestrial products.
So there's also a lot of implications there.
And then explorations throughout the history of humanity
has been really an important catalyzer
for technology development.
And so there's a lot of different reasons
why exploration is is so important.
But I also like to think that exploration
has an even more fundamental reason for being there
and really more important benefit.
And that exploration is one of these few things in our world
that can really bring together people
from all kinds of different backgrounds,
no matter where you're from, where you grew up,
what age you are, what kind of profession you pursue,
exploration is one of these few things
where we can all be captivated
and all be sharing in this moment and in this joy.
And this is a really big part of what we do
at the Ocean Exploration Trust,
is use exploration as a way
to bring people together and work together
that do not typically work together.
That can be a very powerful and (indistinct)
in bringing together people from different backgrounds,
different parts of the world,
and all have a common purpose.^
So I work for the Ocean Exploration Trust
and our mission is really to explore the ocean,
unknown parts of the ocean to seek out new discoveries
while pushing the boundaries of technology,
outreach and education.
And we do this by owning and operating primarily
our main platform, which is the Exploration Vessel Nautilus,
which is a absolutely wonderful platform to work on.
220 feet research vessel equipped with a whole suite
of different state-of-the-art exploration technologies.
It has several state-of-the-art
sea floor and water column mapping sonars,
that are mounted on hull of the ship.
And these are really important when you go to places
that have never been mapped or characterized.
Getting a good map of the sea floor
is really the foundation to do following work.
In addition to mapping sonars,
the ship is also equipped
with several remotely operated vehicles.
These are submersibles that are not crewed,
so there's no one living or traveling on them,
and they are just wonderful tools for exploration
equipped with a whole suite
of different high definition
and standard definition cameras,
sensors that can measure, temperature, oxygen,
whatever your favorite environmental parameter is.
Also manipulator arms that are able to,
where you can collect physical specimens.
And as I mentioned, these are uncrewed systems,
so they are tethered to the ship,
so they actually work as a team.
You have two of these submersible working in tandem.
The bottom here is remotely operated vehicle Hercules,
which sits on the bottom,
then you have a tow sled above it,
which provides this illumination and view from the top.
And then that vehicle is then tethered
to the top of the ship where in the control van,
you'll have about a dozen or so people
that are controlling the hold operations,
the pilots that navigate these two vehicles on the sea floor
and communicate with the people
that drive the ship, scientists, video engineers,
and all that make all this operation possible.
Now, another wonderful thing
about the Exploration Vessel Nautilus
is this white dome that you see
towards the back of the ship.
This allows us to have a high bandwidth internet
and this is a really a wonderful way
to share what we do out there in real time
with basically anyone that has an internet connection.
So I showed you that image previously
of what a setup would look like
when you're sitting right on the control van,
but people on shore can basically see and mimic
the similar kind of displays and see,
pull up different video feeds and pull up any of the cameras
that are shown from the sea floor.
And this is really a wonderful tool
to just harness intellectual capacity
that it's not just in the couple dozen or so scientists
that we can bring on any one of our missions,
but in fact we can have scientists from around the world
participate in real time
and view exactly what we're seeing on the ship,
be connected with people on the ship,
and that will help guide the explorations.
In addition to as a tool for science and exploration,
having this telepresence is also a really spectacular tool
for outreach and education, inspiring the next generation.
Anyone with an internet connection
is really able to share in the excitement and discovery.
And on pretty much every one of our missions,
we livestream our video feeds,
and that provides a wonderful tool for anyone
to participate with what we do.
In terms of our general priorities, so we are...
Most of our work is really about basic exploration.
So mapping and exploring poorly known areas of the ocean.
And as I mentioned before,
that is not so difficult to do
because the vast majority of our oceans are unexplored,
but it does require some advanced technologies to do so.
And that takes me to that second bullet,
integrating emergent technologies.
There's just a wonderful plethora of different technologies
that are being developed
and are being just integrated little by little.
And so we also serve as a platform
to test and integrate some of these emergent technologies,
and then blend them with some of the traditional approaches
that have withstood the test of time.
Then we're also, a lot of our work
is really about supporting,
not just gathering more information,
but gathering information
that can help support informed management decisions.
So collecting data that can be directly relevant
to resource management.
The fourth bullet is really important to what we do,
especially here in the Pacific.
So we're really, one of our guiding pillars
is to co-develop our expeditions
so it has locally relevant
and it's uses culturally appropriate ways of doing things.
There's this common misconception
that places that are uninhabited,
that they're not important to people,
and this is really not the case.
These places, while you might not have permanent residents,
they are in many cases sacred and really important.
And so we take that to heart
and really try to co-develop our work
with the local and cultural knowledge at hand.
Then we also strive to engage,
and engage not just scientists and engineers
and technical ex experts,
but really everyone bring what we do
to audiences around the world.
And last but certainly not least,
we are also committed
to making our data publicly accessible.
So we realize that we are one of the few privileged folks
that get to visit some of these remote places,
and in many cases, it's the first time
that we get to go there.
And many people might not be able to go back,
or scientists, for years to decades to come,
so we really try to strive
to archive all of our data in places
that the broader community,
scientists, resource managers, and anyone
can access them, and then enable follow on work.
So I mentioned that we're just here about to start
a very exciting field season
that will bring EV Nautilus
throughout some of the most remote places
in the Central Pacific,
then also doing some work of British Columbia
in support of the Ocean Networks Canada.
And so it's a jam-packed season
that will have visits the most fascinating places
that we have here in the Pacific Ocean.
In terms of just broad areas
and things that we might be serving this year,
these are some of the most exciting things
that we'll be exploring.
So many sea mount communities
where we expect to find some coral and sponge
and other gardens
where you have really dense associations of communities.
We'll also be visiting some hydrothermal vents,
both in Hawai'i and off British Columbia,
serving some pretty striking geological formations.
And then we're also planning a few surveys
of shipwrecks and underwater cultural heritage sites.
So whatever your interest may be,
we will be visiting likely a site
that may be of interest to you.
In terms of how we operate,
so I mentioned that a big part of what we do
is mapping and characterizing
places that are poorly known or unknown,
and most of our expeditions
are really using these three tools here.
So I talked about the sonars
that are mounted on the hull of the ship.
On pretty much every one of our expeditions,
we map places and we plan these expeditions
to map over areas that have not yet been mapped,
and then those maps are really important to inform
where you might wanna do more dedicated surveys,
and this is where
our remotely operated vehicles come through.
So we pick places where there's interesting topography,
and then deploy our remotely operated vehicles
in those places.
And then last but certainly not least,
we use telepresence technologies
to beam the data and images from those sea floor surveys
to people around the world
so that everyone can be part
in the science operations of our expeditions.
Now, this is our standard mode of operations,
and we'll have a lot of that this year,
but in addition to that,
we'll also be integrating a whole suite
of very exciting tools.
And thanks through the NOAA
Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute
that is supporting a lot of our expeditions,
this year, we'll be testing and integrating
many different technologies.
This year, we'll be showcasing, there on top left,
this is a new piece of equipment for the very first season.
We'll have a new sonar that is not...
It's purpose is not to map the sea floor
but rather to map what's in the water column.
So this is a fishery sonar,
provides you information
in terms of where you might have abundances
of big schools of fish
and other features of interest in the water column.
We'll also be deploying on several expeditions.
This red vehicle here in the middle of the top panel,
this is the uncrewed surface vehicle, DriX,
by the University of New Hampshire.
So this is another uncrewed vehicle
that can act as a second ship, if you will,
that is equipped with other sonars and is basically can...
You can launch it from the ship
and then it can do mapping operations away from the ship
and then free the ship to do more mapping.
Then we'll also be deploying on one of expeditions Mesobot.
This yellow robot here towards the top right.
This is another uncrewed system
and it's specialized to exploring the water column.
So those species
that are freely living in the water column,
we'll be deploying that in one of our missions.
Then we'll also be deploying, the top right here,
a (indistinct) profiler developed by folks
at the University of Hawai'i,
and we'll be deploying that
here around the Hawaiian Islands.
And then two on the bottom,
we'll have a deep autonomous profiler.
This is a lander.
This is a piece of equipment that can be deployed
for up to a day at a time.
It collects continuous environmental data and imageries,
so allows you to collect data over a higher time span
than than many of the things like submersibles.
And then we'll also be mounting several pieces of equipment
on our remotely operated vehicle.
One that I'll talk more in detail here is this,
on the bottom right, this is a spectrometer.
They'll be mounting on our remotely operated vehicle.
And this is a wonderful piece of technology
that gives you a lot of information about the substrate,
the chemical composition,
and physical properties of things
without you having to collect a sample.
So, in short here,
we'll be doing a lot of ROV and mapping operations.
But in addition to that,
we'll be bringing a whole suite
of other very exciting cutting edge technologies
onto our operations.
In terms of our field season,
So we'll start our field season here.
In the Hawaiian Islands,
we'll have a couple shakedown expeditions
starting next Monday,
and these are mostly just to test our systems.
And then we'll be having an expedition
around Kingman and Palmyra
before heading out to British Columbia,
and then returning back
to the Central Pacific for some very exciting expeditions,
both in the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument
as well as in the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument
So what I would like to do is just highlight here,
these three expeditions
that are really going to be very exciting.
And since this is a sanctuary's webinar series,
as Andy mentioned, there is a public process underway
for electing comments on the potential designation
of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Sanctuary.
So I just wanted to highlight these three expeditions here
that will be going to places
that are being considered for sanctuary.
And it's very exciting because we'll be serving these places
and collecting information that could help inform
that designation process.
And as I mentioned previously,
you will all be able
to participate in those expeditions remotely,
view what we see on the ship,
and that way inform that sanctuary designation process.
So the first of our expeditions
that will be fully televised,
this starts in mid-May
and will be going to one of the most remote places
in the Pacific Ocean.
So Kingman and Palmyra,
these are two of the seven emergent land features
in the central Pacific.
These tiny specs of land with tiny atolls
that stick out of a really large piece of US real estate.
And those tiny islands there, Kingman and Palmyra,
there have been surveys around them
for quite some time,
and those surveys have all found
some pretty extraordinary biodiversity
both in terms of seabirds
and other terrestrial animals and flora.
And then in terms of the shallow water coral reefs
in these places are some of the most pristine places
that we have in the Pacific.
And the information from those surveys we're used
to underpin the designation
of what is the Pacific Remote Islands
Marine National Monument back in 2009
and the subsequent expansion in 2014.
However, the vast majority of the US EEZ in this area
is in really deep waters
where we have very little information.
In fact, when we look at this area, Kingman and Palmyra,
and there's a US exclusive economic zone
of close to 350,000 square kilometers,
and we've only done 25 dives in this area in total.
So these are historic dives by different programs
including the Hawaiʻi Underwater Research Laboratory,
the Okeanos Explorer did a couple surveys here
during Capstone.
The Schmidt Ocean Institute also did a dive
right around Palmyra
as well as an international waters right outside of it.
And then we in the Nautilus
have been privileged to do some work
here in the last several years.
But as like you can see,
outside, what is the current monument,
there's a lot of real estate that is completely on surveyed.
We have some mapping data available,
but in terms of dives that have imaged the seafloor,
there's only a couple to date.
And this is something that will look to improve,
get more data in these dark places here
where we have very little information.
So we'll have...
This is our first ROV expedition,
May 16th to June 14th.
We'll be focusing the expedition on ROV explorations.
In these blue areas,
these are places where there's some interesting topography
and suggests that there's some really interesting biology
as well as geology,
and so we'll be deploying the ROV
as well as doing mapping surveys over there
to collect some more information.
In terms of what we expect to find and see,
so a lot of these surveys will be targeting areas
where we expect to find interesting geology and biology.
So do a lot of these surveys
over places where we find heart topography
and topography that has a lot of complexity
from previous surveys in this area.
these host really interesting geological features
as well as in some cases, pretty dense communities.
And then one interesting twist of this expedition
is that it will be the first time
that we integrate this Raman spectroscopy
into our operations.
This Raman spectroscopy is a technology
that has been used for a long time,
but more in the terrestrial and the lap environment,
not in situ.
And so a big part of this mission will be for the first time
testing this new piece of equipment in the field.
So yeah, very exciting first expedition of the year.
Then we'll have a couple expeditions
that will completely shift gears and go to British Columbia
before returning to the Central Pacific
where we have a second expedition
that will also do work
in the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument,
but this time in the Johnston Atoll unit.
This area here in the center.
Johnston Atoll has the unique distinction
in that it is the most remote atoll in the world.
And similar to what I just mentioned
about Palmyra and Kingman,
there is a couple pieces of land
that stick out of the ocean
that host some really fascinating seabirds
and other flora and fauna.
They're surrounded by some really pristine
and unique coral reefs,
but the vast majority in this real estate is in deep waters
and has only peripherally been surveyed
if we look at historical explorations to this area.
So all the same vehicles that I mentioned previously
have done work here.
There's also been a few dives were done here
by the Alvin previously,
but you can see that there's a large piece
of land here of water that has never been explored.
And so in August, we'll be going to this area here in blue
and adding to hopefully to the information that we have.
Important to mention is,
you can't see it here in this map,
but this top area,
there is a huge ridge that goes for several thousand miles,
and that ridge is known as Necker Ridge
and it connects actually,
the Hawaiian archipelago to Johnston.
So for a long time we have understood
that the biodiversity of Johnston and Hawai'i
is connected.
We have big overlap of species across these areas.
This has been shown also with oceanographic data
as well as with genetic data.
However, those surveys have all been kind of restricted
to shallow water.
And so this is gonna be
one of the first times that will be able to go
to the extension of the Necker Ridge
in just in the periphery
and see how the biodiversity compares
to that of the Hawaiian archipelago.
In terms of what we'll be bringing,
so this will be, again, a mapping an ROV expedition.
But in addition to ROV and mapping,
we will also be bringing uncrewed surface vehicle DriX
on this expedition that will a add a really powerful tool
of being able to map more
than we could just do with mapping with the Nautilus.
So Nautilus will be mapping on this mission,
but then we'll have a second uncrewed surface vehicle
that will be able to map.
And so that will be hopefully a way
that we can map more of that dark area
where we don't yet have maps,
and then we'll be able to plan our ROV surveys
and survey a whole suite of different areas.
So there's many seamount in that area
that we know from similar places where we surveyed,
they host some really interesting biology,
as well as geology.
So that area is a somewhat of a confused area
in terms of geological context
where there's several places
where we don't really understand how these seamounts formed.
Now, after that expedition,
well be going to a different monument.
And in September,
we'll be going to the Papahānaumokuākea
Marine National Monument that Andy and Malia work for.
So we're very excited to go
to this very special, as Malia and Andy alluded to,
sacred place for many reasons,
a lot of extraordinary biodiversity
including many species that are found nowhere on the planet.
But just like what I mentioned about Johnson and Palmyra,
a lot of our knowledge and the images that we show
about these special places
are really about the shallow water,
but the vast majority of this monument
is in really deep water where we still have,
only explored a small portion of it.
Now, this area, there's been a lot of explorations
right next to the island.
So these are again historic explorations
by other programs and ours to date.
You can see a lot of these dots
are right around the islands, and then the periphery.
But in the more northwestern portion of the monument,
there's large, large portions that have never been explored.
And so this will be a very exciting time
that we'll be able to, in September,
targeting that blow area.
And there, this is the most remote part of the monument,
and that is, in large part, not been mapped or explored.
In terms of what we expect to find,
this is an area where we have several seamounts coming out.
And then in fact last year,
we did these three dots here that are inside
of this area that we're exploring.
We did some dives there,
and what we found there
is some of the most extraordinary biological communities
that have been surveyed in the Pacific.
So in terms of densities of animals,
those top two picture
are pictures from last year's surveys
where on a couple of dives at depths about 1500 meters,
we came across densities of coral, sponges,
and other invertebrates that really rival similar densities
of what you would see on a shallow water coral reef,
but in much deeper water.
And there's also several seamounts in that area
that are likely not formed of the Hawaiian hotspot,
or I should say, definitely the not form
of the Hawaiian hotspot and their origin is unclear,
so we'll be collecting geological samples to help age them.
And then last but certainly not least,
this area, that blue box that I showed you previously,
was the stage for one of most pivotal events
in World War II history.
So the Battle of Midway is largely considered
as one of the most important events
that turned the tide in in World War II.
And while a lot of that happened close to shore
around Midway Atoll,
a big part of the battle was also fought
hundreds of miles offshore,
and several large carriers and vessels were sunk.
And so we hoping to, for the first time,
survey some of these archeological sites.
And this expedition as the previous,
we're very privileged that we've been able to go
to Papahānaumokuākea several times.
In fact, EV Nautilus, this will be the seventh time
going to Papahānaumokuākea.
And thanks to these previous missions,
we've really been very fortunate
to work with staff and partners of the monument.
And so this upcoming expeditions
were really built on the great relationships
and the great momentum we've built in the past.
And so we're very fortunate to continue this.
So we've already developed, or I should say,
the Monument Cultural Working Group worked hard
to develop a expedition name for this expedition.
And then we'll also, like in previous years,
we'll be taking to see a cultural liaison
from Hawai'i Science Communication fellows
as well as interns to help us incorporate
Hawaiian worldview values and perspectives
into the planning and execution of the mission.
And this as previous expedition to Papahānaumokuākea
will also seek to build several resources,
not just in English and Spanish like we do,
but also in Ōlelo Hawai'i.
And so who can participate on our expeditions?
And the the answer is really anyone
that has an internet connection.
So this is one thing I hope you all can take away
from this presentation.
So if you get one thing out of this presentation,
is I hope that you spend a little bit of time
to look through our website.
So nautiluslive.org is really a portal
to a whole plethora of information
related to deep sea exploration.
And so when we are doing our expeditions
on our landing page, we'll have,
right there, you'll be able to see
what the Nautilus is doing.
If the ROVs are in the water,
you'll be able to see exactly what is happening,
some stats there.
And so anyone can really listen in
and follow along as we explore these places.
And then in addition to that,
we also have a pretty robust education and outreach program,
and this is going to be very active
throughout all of our expeditions this year.
There will be interns sailing
on each and every one of our expeditions,
getting at-sea experience.
They'll be professional educators
or what we call science communication fellows.
So these are professional
formal and informal educators that sail on our expedition
and help us package the information
and the data that we collect in a way
that it's can be understood by audiences around the world.
We'll also have
what we call live ship-to-shore interactions.
So anyone can request these.
So these are, in essence,
Zoom or Google Meet calls with the ship
where you can interact directly
with personnel in the ship.
So for those of you who are teachers or educators,
you can basically schedule these Zoom calls,
and then have a conversation with people on board
and bring that to your audiences.
On our website,
we also have a lot of K through 12 educational resources
as well as media production
and are also active on six different social media channels.
Now, for those who are interested in participating
in our expeditions a little bit more hands on
and not just passively listen to what's happening,
but actually participate in a two-way setting
and actually communicate with scientists on the ship
and help guide and plan our expedition,
we have our Scientists Ashore Program.
So Scientists Ashore are people that have an expertise
related to the mission
and they help plan and execute missions.
People that sign up as Scientists Ashore
receive daily updates
in terms of what we're planning and doing on the ship,
and then they will have access
to two-way communications with the ship
and are able to then help inform what we do.
And they also have access to realtime data streams,
not just the video,
but a higher quality video
and as well as a whole bunch of different data streams.
So this is kind of what it looks like
when you sign up for our Scientists Ashore.
You'll get access to a science portal,
and that will basically,
you'll be able to pull up all the different data streams
that people on the ship see,
and that way actively participate with the explorations.
Now, public data and making data publicly accessible
is a big part of our mission.
Now, we realize again that we're fortunate
to be able to do work,
and so wanna bring that information back
and that will help catalyze more science and research.
So all of our data is archived in places
where people can access it.
So I mentioned already the Nautilus Live website.
This is a great tool.
So every one of our expeditions
will have a dedicated cruise
that will link a whole bunch of resources
relating to that cruise, including background information,
highlight images and educational material.
Then all of the ROV video is,
we have a YouTube channel
where you can not just watch it live
but pull up previous videos
and actually you can rewind within a day also.
So if you join a dive late,
you can actually rewind it and view it
from last 12 hours on.
All of our mapping and environmental data
is put here in a couple repositories
about two months after an expedition.
That is put there for anyone to access.
And then in terms of the samples we collect,
they are all also housed in archives
where they can be requested by anyone on loan
and people can go visit these archives.
Some of these museums have fellowship programs
where you can apply,
and then go study the the samples there.
And then last also, some of these repositories,
it might take a little time for it to get there.
If you need data on a more urgent request,
you can always request that from us after expeditions.
Now, I wanna just finish this talk
by just hopefully with call to action.
I hope that there's something in this
for each and every one of you.
And there's many different ways for you to all get involved
whether you are a scientist,
a cultural knowledge holder, or an educator,
whatever your background may be
or your interests may be,
hopefully we'll have some tools
that will help you access our information
and engage with our information.
So I'll ask Malia to put here in the chat
links to a whole bunch of different resources
for you to dive in a little bit deeper.
Of course the link to our website,
the links to where you can request data,
links to reviewing the plans for this season.
So we have documents that basically outline everything
I talked about expeditions in more detail
and have more dedicated plans of what we're planning
on each one of these expeditions.
Links to sign up as a Scientist Ashore, which if you do so,
and I encourage each and every one of you
that might have an interest,
to be diving bit deeper, to sign up.
That will give you access
to whole plethora of information including,
you'll be invited to participate in planning webinars.
You can also request ship-to-shore interactions.
So for those of you are teachers or educators
or work in a museum exhibit,
you could request an interaction.
And so while we're at sea,
you could have a conversation with us on board.
And last, but certain not least,
we are active on six different social media channels.
So that's also a way for you to stay up to date
with what we're planning.
And with that, I just really wanted to mahalo you,
to thank all of you for taking some time out of your day
to learn about what we have ahead of us,
and I hope that all of you will be able to join
our exciting expeditions.
So with that, I'll take any questions
and you can also always email us at science@oet.org.
Thank you so much.
-: Hi, mahalo, Dan.
That was a really interesting and in-depth view
of the all the things Nautilus is doing.
It's incredible, and we really look forward
to what's gonna go on the Pacific for this season.
And hopefully my audio is better.
Somebody told me I sounded like I was underwater.
I think my air conditioning unit
was spinning a bunch of noise my way.
But we do have a few questions for you
and we do have time for those.
Well, the first question I have for you is,
do the sonars that you were talking about
do they disturb whales and other sea life?
-: So, yeah, it's an excellent question
and one that we get often.
So the short answer is that
whales and sea life do hear it.
We do have a whole suite of different protocols
to mitigate any adverse impacts.
One of which is that there's a soft startup.
So these things are not blasted,
but it builds up over time.
We also stand watch around the clock
to make sure that there are no marine mammals
directly near to the ship
before we do our mapping operations.
And so, yeah, there's a whole suite
of best management practices to try to avoid any impacts.
One important thing to mention is that,
you know, the sea floor mapping sonars
are very different to some of the acoustic systems
that are used for military applications.
So, while sea life does hear it,
it's very different impact.
-: Great.
And there are a couple of questions
around how many new species you discover in each expedition.
I know that's a tough one.
-: Yeah, it is a tough one to answer
because from the time when you collect a sample
to the time you can verify
that it's actually a new species,
to the time it takes to then write it up and publish it,
that can take years, to decades, to centuries.
In terms of what Nautilus has done,
now, just last year,
there were six new species that were described.
And to date, we've had close to 50 species being described
from what we've collected.
But in terms of what we've collected
as likely new species and just will take time,
that's probably orders of magnitude higher.
So a lot of these things are still sitting in museums
waiting for scientists to properly analyze it
compared to already described species.
But last thing I'll just say is that I can guarantee you
that in each and every one of our expeditions,
this year, we'll definitely find things
where we didn't know existed in these places,
including new species.
-: Yeah, thanks for that.
And I'll add to that,
that our Cultural Working Group
also works closely with the scientists
to develop Hawaiian names for some of these species,
or some new species but also some existing species
that may not have Hawaiian names.
So there's that parallel process
and working closely with the scientists
to understand the behavior and biology of these organisms
to have Hawaiian named for it.
So it's a wonderful biocultural process
that's going on there,
learning through both two different lenses.
Same lens, different perspective,
depends on how you look at it.
One thing...
So someone wants to know
how do we know when to watch the live stream.
-: So, excellent question.
So I mean, through our website,
basically, you'll have...
Anytime you log in, you'll be able to see what's happening.
So if the REs are not in the water,
you'll see cameras from top side.
So basically just logging in our website
is the quickest way of seeing what's happening.
For our Scientists Ashore,
we also are able to provide a bit of a prediction
of when we're deploying the vehicles
and when they'll be pulled from the water.
But the quickest thing is just,
the materials that Malia will share through the chat,
including our website as well as document.
There's a Google document link there,
our expedition overview plans
that will give you the dates of everyone,
our expeditions, general timelines
of when we expect to be diving.
And, yeah, but the quickest way is, yeah,
is look on the website and see what's happening.
-: Yeah, I've found that there's an incredible community
of very deep sea nerds who follow on Twitter
and I know not everybody's not,
Twitter's not the favorite thing for a lot of people,
but that's like,
if you wanna know when things are happening,
that's the platform to go to
'cause it's real up to the moment information
and screenshots of some of the cool critters
that you guys find.
Let's see, one other question is,
"Since you're visiting so many places,
how do you prevent cross-contamination
by organisms on the hull?"
-: Yeah, so excellent question
and one that we are very, very much aware of
and we take very seriously.
So, especially before we go to these monuments
and protected areas, as part of our permit requirements,
we are required to have a thorough hull inspection
to make sure that there's no unwanted organisms
trying to hitch a ride with us.
So there's thorough hull inspections
and other inspections that happen on board.
Then in between sites
when we dive in the different places,
all the vehicles are rinsed down
and let air drive so that we're not cross contaminating
from one site to the next.
So, yeah, it is absolutely an important thing,
biosecurity in these places.
These are very special places and very unique,
and a lot of that is because they haven't yet been altered
by human impact.
And, yeah, we don't wanna do that either,
and so we adhere to these best management practices.
-: Great, and I know you have to go at one,
so I'll give you one more question, and then we'll...
Any other questions will be answered.
We're gonna send these all to Dan
and we'll get back the results out
to everybody who registered for the webinar.
But one last question and I know you gotta run.
How many people are on the ship?
Like how many crew, what scientists,
geologists, biologists, biologists, et cetera?
-: Yeah, thanks, Andy.
The EV Nautilus has about 50 births.
So 50 people sail with us.
About 17 or so are crews,
so these are the permanent staff of the ship, if you will.
So that's the captain, officers, engineers,
cooks, stewards that basically run the ship
and the operations there.
And the other 33 or so are what we call mission personnel,
so they are specific to a mission.
So these include scientists,
they include the ROV pilots,
they include student interns,
they include fellows, education fellows.
Long story short here is that,
basically, there's a lot of depth in those 50 people,
a lot of different disciplines.
So for those of you who might not be scientists,
there's a lot of different avenues to go into this,
and, yeah, there's definitely a lot of pathways
to go into the ocean.
-: Great, well, mahalo, Dan,
and thanks for your time.
And I've taken back presenters.
So I know you need to run,
but thank you again so much for a wonderful presentation
and we look forward to connecting with Nautilus
this coming year.
Again, mahalo.
-: Thank you so much, Andy.
-: All right, aloha, everybody.
Well we have one more question that's kind of more from me.
Somebody asked what's the difference
between a marine national monument
and a national marine sanctuary.
And just very quickly,
a marine national monuments are monuments,
in general, are created under presidential proclamation.
That means president writing an executive order,
and that doesn't quite have as much permanence
as the National Marine Sanctuary,
which is a much kind of longer in depth process
and a congressional action
which does have more permanence.
It also brings with it all the regulatory structure
of the National Marine Sanctuary system,
which has very extensive and tried and true regulations
for protecting the areas,
protecting the bottom habitat for other methods for,
in case of a oil spill or things like that,
access to the oil pollution funds.
And so more permanent protection essentially is the answer,
is that a national sanctuary
will give stronger and lasting protections for these areas
as opposed to a marine national monument.
So they'll overlay the Marine National Monument.
It won't go away,
it'll be overlaid by National Marine Sanctuary
should either or both of those go through.
So with that, thank you everybody for attending.
That was a really great presentation by Dan.
He's a wonderful guy.
He used to work with us,
and I used to get the pleasure of being near him
and picking his brain every now and then.
So really great to have him.
But lastly, this webinar is being recorded
and will be archived and loaded up onto our site.
And that's the website there,
so please check to that in about 10 days.
Also, you will get a certificate of attendance
for this webinar for professional development credits
or things like that.
We'll be getting that out to you in a day or two.
And please join us next month.
We have a really great webinar on May 18th
with Stacy Robinson
from the Hawaiian Monk Seal Research Program
and she's going to be talking,
giving us an update on Hawaiian monk seal,
their status,
what they summarized from last year's field work,
some cool information on their critter cam program
and other things related to monks seals.
So if you want the latest and greatest information
on Hawaiian monk seal, this the webinar to attend.
So we hope to see you.
And lastly, please take our survey
because we wanna hear from you,
we wanna hear how we can do things better.
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And with that, aloha, everybody.
Take care.
Happy Earth Week and Earth Day coming up this Saturday.
So remember, we're all residents of this planet,
so do what you can to take care
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Aloha, take care.