Why Ocean Exploration Could Matter to Your Future More Than You Think

0:00 Did you know that we know more about some parts of the moon than we do about large areas of our own ocean floor? That should bother probably all of us because you cannot protect a world that you have never seen. This is the How to Protect the ocean Podcast, your weekday podcast for people who want to understand what is really happening in the ocean. So hit that follow button if you do not wanna miss future episodes. Today we are talking about ocean exploration, discovery, and why NOAA's deep ocean work actually matters. We've been talking about NOAA for the past week and we have an interview tomorrow with somebody from the ocean Conservancy who's talking about how important it's to keep NOAA programs funded, which NOAA has been undergoing cuts over the last year because of the Trump administration.

0:44 They want to decrease anything that has to do with climate change related work, even though it's important to us all, not only from US citizens, but also from the world. Because NOAA leads a lot of this research, not only in protecting marine mammals, sea turtles, sharks, and other fish, not only protecting seafood markets and fishing communities and the seafood economy as a whole, but also in natural disasters. And one thing that we haven't talked about yet, which we're gonna be talking about today, is we're gonna be talking about exploration, discovery, and why NOAA's deep ocean work actually matters because this is something that doesn't get talked about enough. And because the ocean covers most of our planet, over 70% of our planet, yet vast areas remain poorly mapped, rarely observed, or even completely unexplored.

1:30 It's interesting that we know more about the Marianna Trench, which is the deepest trench in the world, and we still need to know a lot about it, but we don't know much about any other place in the ocean, which is difficult to think. It's not just a trivia fact. It is a real management problem. If we don't know where vulnerable coral gardens exist, where unique sea mount ecosystems thrive or where critical habitats lie, we can accidentally damage them before we even knew where they are. So just even think about deep sea mining. Deep sea mining is a terrifying thing. I know it can provide a great resource for electric vehicle batteries and other renewable energy systems. But the fact that we don't know much about, or anything really about deep sea processes compared to what we should is really a travesty.

2:12 And it's scary to think that we can say yes to deep sea mining without fully understanding the deep sea, or more about the deep sea and how the deep sea runs, operates that will help us. And if we disrupt that operation, how it could harm us. So NOAA's exploration programs use research vessels. They use remotely operated vehicles, ROVs, sonar mapping sensors, and cameras to reveal hidden parts of the ocean. And recent expeditions have documented deep sea corals, sponge fields, unusual geology and species many people have never actually seen before. I mean, we never would've had the Dumbo octopus without NOAA and without these deep sea aspiration missions.

2:54 These missions have produced a stunning footage, but the real value is the actual data that we've seen. Maps inform marine protected areas. Habitat data informs fisheries decisions and baseline observations help detect climate change impacts over time. That's a really important part, and discovery can often drive innovation. We often find out that the new medications, the new discoveries in medicine have actually come from the ocean. And that's a really important aspect, the fact that we barely know what's happening in the ocean, and we know that understanding some of these species, some of these habitats and how they survive different aspects of the ocean and how they can recoup or regenerate or even recover from natural disasters could really help us in our own biology, our own ecology.

3:42 And I think that's an important aspect that we just don't get. Also these exploration missions should look at extreme ocean environments that have inspired advances in robotics, material science, and biotechnology. So it's not just medicine that we're looking at. We're looking at everything that the deep sea can provide, that the ocean can provide. That's something looking at like hydrothermal vent and how species survive in hydrothermal vent and how that can translate in how humans can survive in really unlikely situations where you have sulfur or you have different things we could look at the mechanisms that allow animals that can survive these things, that could help us survive anything that happens, any kind of poisoning that we can have or anything that changes in our bodies.

4:24 And as I mentioned before, ocean exploration also matters in the current debates like deep sea mining. How can society be responsible for decisions about industrial activity in places like we barely understand? Think about that. It is just insane to say, Hey, we can actually help ruin this area even though we don't think we're gonna ruin it, but we don't really know what's gonna happen, what's gonna help us in the short term? Then we'll actually do it. That question of looking at how we can spend on, how we can destroy environments instead of protecting it is really difficult. And when we look at things like deep sea mining, that type of question about how we can make responsible decisions about industrial activity in places we barely understand. That question gets harder when exploration budgets actually shrink.

5:07 And this is what happens with NOAA. We start to seek funding cuts and program cuts that can help bring down the operational budget of the entire government. But in the long run, it doesn't help us in any kind of way. It doesn't help US citizens. It doesn't help understanding the ocean a lot better for a lot of the reasons that I've outlined this week. Exploration in general for it helps people 'cause it helps that exploration, that creates knowledge, that supports smarter policy, better risk decisions and scientific process. It also inspires the next generation. You know, a kid watching a live ROV on YouTube, just like a kid who watch like the Artemis II mission and they want to be astronauts.

5:49 That watching an ROV dive today could become tomorrow's ocean engineer or marine scientists. We have no idea. This actually matters to people and why it matters to the ocean? Because knowing unknown ecosystems, our vulnerable ecosystems, that could be really great to know because we can make them less vulnerable through management decisions. That first step in protection is knowing what exists. So imagine understanding vulnerable and discovering vulnerable communities in the deep sea or elsewhere that we hadn't just originally explored and protecting that area and having a benefit, a net positive benefit on the ocean. The deep sea, it's not an empty space. It is alive. It is connected with the rest of the planet and still full of surprises just because we don't think that there are marine mammals underneath, but there are like tons of diversity of worms.

6:37 We still don't understand how those worms affect the deep sea and how they help the deep sea be the deep sea as we know it. And so I think that's really important to know. And NOAA is one of the few institutions that help us see it clearly. I think it's important to look at a mission like the Artemis II and see how exciting it was, and it was exciting for everybody, including me as a marine biologist. It was exciting to watch. It was cool to hear the scientists and what they go through when they live in space and stuff like that. Just like it's important for me and fun for me to find out what it's like to see what's on the bottom of the ocean. Looking at hydrothermal vents, looking at how the smoke from the hydrothermal vents can go across the Pacific and what that will do maybe for another habitat in that area.

7:19 Does it work off of that smoke? Does it use that smoke for some kind of reason? We don't know. Looking at these little nodules that are out there that are being used to mine for critical minerals, but also they could be producing dark oxygen that could help us understand how the deep sea survives and how animals survive the deep sea. Knowing more about the moon and less about this planet is not a good thing. We still need to know about what's in space, but we also need to know what's helping drive every second breath that we take from the ocean. I think that's an important aspect, and it's something that we need to spend more money on, something we don't spend money on, but we'll spend money on destroying it before we protect it. And that's something that I want you to think about and think about why that's so important for us and why we're not fighting for more of it.

8:03 And I know a lot of the people who are listening to this podcast are fighting for NOAA. If you live in the US or you don't and you understand how important NOAA is to the ocean in general, not just to the US citizens, but to the world, I think it's important to fight for funding, for science, for exploration, for protection, and protection of humans as well as marine species. It's really, really important. Tomorrow we're gonna be talking to a representative from the Ocean Conservancy. He's gonna talk more about NOAA and he's gonna go through a lot of the things that we discussed here, but he's gonna reiterate why it's important. And I do these types of episodes where I do these solo episodes on different aspects of, say, NOAA, or different aspects of Antarctica, which we talked about last week, because it's important for us to know what we need and what people are doing to help protect us in general.

8:47 And I think that's important. I live in Canada. There's often times where I go to the US. If I'm stuck in a storm there, I wanna know if I need to evacuate or not. I wanna make sure that my colleagues, my friends that live in the US are safe because they have an agency like NOAA working at full capacity. Full budgeting, full funding to say, Hey, we wanna protect the people. We want the information to get to the people. And the science, the exploration, the protection of marine mammals and other organisms as well as us is extremely important. That's what NOAA does. So, with that said, that's the episode for today. Tune in for the episode tomorrow. Follow this How to Protect The Ocean Podcast for more of those episodes where we talk about a topic every week. And I think it's really important that we do and so that we turn ocean systems into stories people can actually understand.

9:29 It's a very complex system, but we're here to help out. So more people follow the podcast. The more I can get funded to continue to go on, the more I spend on this podcast. I'm gonna spend a lot of time on it anyway. But follow it so you don't miss any of the topics that we talk about in the future. And of course, tune in tomorrow for that Ocean Conservancy interview I am doing speaking about NOAA. So we're talking about NOAA. This is gonna be really important. It was a great interview and I can't wait for you to listen to it tomorrow. So tune in tomorrow. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk to you tomorrow and happy conservation.