The Ocean is crucial for the climate yet unknown
Considering the importance of the oceans in the overall function of the earth’s ecosystems, the water column, in particular the deep-sea, is significantly under-surveyed in time and space [1].
The ocean interior remains largely invisible for human eyes and the critical processes that happen there will remain obscure until novel techniques enable us to observe them at the spatio-temporal resolution at which they occur [2].
At the moment, the data collected by conventional methods (i.e. ship, moorings) is scarcely distributed both in time and space, and do not meet the basic requirements posed by these challenges.
Marine Strategy Framework Directive-MSFD and the Integrated Ecosystem Assessment-IEA
This technological gap has been clearly identified by the EU and the USA who placed the identification of new monitoring tools and best sampling practices for the assessment of environmental status at the core of their international management policies/strategies (i.e., the Marine Strategy Framework Directive-MSFD and the Integrated Ecosystem Assessment-IEA, as a support to the Ecosystem-Based Management-EBM [3]).
[1] Thurber, AR, et al., 2014. “Ecosystem function and services provided by the deep sea”. Biogeosciences, 11, 3941–3963
[2] Godø, O.R., et al., 2014. “Marine ecosystem acoustics (MEA): quantifying processes in the sea at the spatio-temporal scales on which they occur”. ICES Journal of Marine science, 71: 2357-2369
[3] Samhouri, J.F., et al., 2014. “Lessons learned from developing integrated ecosystem assessments to inform marine ecosystem-based”. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 71, Issue 5, Pages 1205–1215