HR: 16:00h
AN: V44A-01 INVITED     [Abstracts]
TI: New opportunities for International Ocean Exploration Collaborations
AU: * Hammond, S R
EM: stephen.r.hammond@noaa.gov
AB: A 2001 National Research Council report, Exploration of the Seas, advocates global ocean exploration to characterize and understand the Earth's least understood frontier. Not coincidentally, one of the priority goals of the NOAA Ocean Exploration (OE) program is to engage in projects and expeditions focused, especially, in remote regions of the world ocean and to do so in partnership with international institutions and agencies. The NZASRoF expedition, which will be reported on in this session, and which was co-sponsored by OE, is an example of such a collaboration. The international ocean science community is increasingly recognizing the value of ocean exploration per se as well as its resulting positive impact of identification of worthy follow on, process-oriented, research. In 2007, the OE program will begin operating a dedicated research vessel, the Okeanos Explorer. Plans are for this vessel to be the focus (although not an exclusive one) of continuous global voyages of discovery which will be planned years in advance by a committee comprised of members from the ocean science and technology communities. Some of these cruises are planned to be sponsored though international partnerships. The ship will be equipped with state-of-the-art sonar, dynamic positioning, and will have both a dedicated deep-water ROV and continuous, broadband satellite connectivity to shore-based science command centers. In order to help facilitate establishment of international ocean exploration partnerships, another priority goal of the NOAA Ocean Exploration program is to support an expansion, and eventually formalization, of a US multi-agency ocean exploration program. Such a multi-agency program is a principal goal of the 2000 President's Report, Discovering Earth's Final Frontier, and it is the main objective of the NRC report recommendations as well.
DE: 1050 Marine geochemistry (4835, 4845, 4850)
DE: 3000 MARINE GEOLOGY AND GEOPHYSICS
DE: 4832 Hydrothermal systems (0450, 1034, 3017, 3616, 8135, 8424)
SC: Volcanology, Geochemistry, Petrology [V]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005