As creatures of the land, it’s easy to forget that most of the living space on Earth resides in the oceans. Not only do oceans cover 70 percent of the planet’s surface, but the fact that they’re three-dimensional provides an incredibly wide range of habitats throughout the water column, with uniquely specialized ecosystems reaching from the relatively temperate ocean/air interface to the extreme temperatures, pressures and darkness of the ocean depths.
With so much of the oceans unexplored, so many extreme environments and so much biodiversity to be found, the images of lifeforms that ocean exploration reveals often seem as if they come from another world altogether. Which, of course, relative to us, they do.
This year, from June to August, an international team from the US and Indonesia collaborated to explore the deep seas near Indonesia. The expedition, known as the Indonesia-USA Deep-Sea Exploration of the Sangihe Talaud Region (INDEX 2010), featured a number of firsts including: the maiden voyage of NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer; the first joint Indonesia-USA ocean exploration expedition; and the first joint international mission with two ships sending live video to scientists in Exploration Command Centers ashore.
Following are a sampling of images returned from the mission. Although we haven’t been able to locate captions for all of the images just yet, we thought the visuals were so wondrously stunning that we’d share them now and add the captions later.
If you’d like to learn more about the Okeanos Explorer, it’s technology and the INDEX-SATAL 2010 expedition, you’ll find a wealth of information at the Okeanos Explorer web site.
