However, I found the recommendation to be myopic in terms of cost, priority, and availability of actual capabilities, and did little to address larger societal challenges.
The ocean observing community has one axiom: The ocean is undersampled in all geographical locations and at all depths. It’s undersampled in temporal and spatial resolution and frequency. In physical and biogeochemical parameters, the ocean has about 1/10th of land observing stations; a stark contrast to the other 70% of the Earth’s surface.
A CONCERTED APPROACH
Fortunately, there are many platforms that observe the ocean environment in real time. Ships have provided marine observations for over a hundred years. Moored buoys have provided deep ocean and coastal marine observations for over fifty years. Drifting buoys and floats have provided drifting observations for over thirty years. Uncrewed platforms have provided remote observations for over twenty years. They all need to be tied into a system of systems, so their collective value is realized.
In the summer of 2022, NDBC mitigated two buoy outages in the Gulf of Mexico with two Saildrone uncrewed surface vehicles (USVs). Overall, the mission provided reliable observations. However, the Saildrones were located in the Loop Current, so when surface winds were low and the ocean currents strong, they struggled to maintain station keeping. This was an important lesson learned, providing applications for other platforms.
Proceeding from the Loop Current mission, in 2023 NDBC replaced a moored buoy located on the west coast with a Saildrone which is providing almost 100% reliability because currents are weaker, and winds are stronger. Real-world lessons like this show the utility of different platforms successfully operating in different environments.
ONGOING INVESTMENTS
There is a time and a place for all these platforms to resolve the observation gaps that exist in the ocean environment. We must develop an overarching strategy that involves diverse platforms and eliminate the idea that one type can, or should, replace another type. A distributed, flexible architecture is required that can accommodate older observations but can also assimilate data from new platforms and capabilities.
More investments in multiple observing systems are necessary to resolve the issue of a severely undersampled ocean environment. Both NOAA and the US Navy are enablers of the Commercial Engagement Through Ocean Technologies (CENOTE) Act signed by the White House in 2018. Along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, a triple helix of innovation is occurring with academia, government and industry collaborating together to use all platforms to observe the environment. These combined capabilities will usher in a golden age of ocean observing.
Reflecting back on the 2022 panel discussion, I realized that the nation’s strategy must be one of coordination, integration, alignment, and collaboration. In-situ, real-time marine observations ensure the successful movement of $1.5 trillion in goods and services in and out of US ports annually. The US Marine Economy accounted for 1.9%, or $432.4 billion, of current-dollar US gross domestic product in 2021. There is a time and a place for all platforms to work together. Our community challenge is to determine the optimum strategy, and architecture, to employ them as a service to society.
This feature originally appeared in ON&T Magazine’s January/February 2024 issue. Click here to read more.
