Page 163 - The Secret Museum

know exactly what they do have,’ he said, but their ideas, and their investment in new

technologies, filter into the world of science and industry and all come massively to
affect our world.

Undersea exploration is crucial to so much of modern life but, because it’s
invisible, we who live on the surface of the Earth tend not to think about it too much.
The ocean is used all the time for transportation of goods (this book, for example,
was printed in China then shipped to bookshops) and that is the most obvious and
visible trading that goes on in the maritime world. Yet the things you can’t see have
just as much impact on our daily life.

If you’re reading these words digitally, the files will have been sent though

undersea fibre optic cables. Every time you make a phone call or send an email, the
information probably passed under the sea. Much of the technology we use each day
is powered by oil, a lot of which comes from deposits found below the seabed, with
the help of robots.

These robots are also doing vital work collecting data. The ocean is still the least
known environmental region on earth, but there are countless robots exploring it
under the sea right now. Kurt explained, ‘Space gets all the attention, but there is a
huge robotic presence in the ocean.’ This presence is likely to increase. ‘Twenty-five

years from now you may well be able to rent time on a system to go down and take a
look at the ocean depths. Personal submarines will be cheaper to buy than a private
jet.’

I thought it might be a little weird if the ocean were full of people bobbing about
in private subs, but Kurt reminded me: ‘The ocean takes up 75 per cent of the surface
of Earth. Essentially, when you’re in a sub, you’re flying in a vast, open space. Even
if we had as many subs in the ocean as we do cars on the surface of the Earth, the
chances of meeting anyone else on your underwater travels would be less than

running into someone in the Sahara.’
Undersea navigation is a big technological challenge. You can’t use GPS

underwater, only acoustic signals – most marine mammals use acoustics for
navigation and communication, but we’re not as skilful as marine mammals yet; we
have a lot to learn. Acoustic signals are used to find oil, to locate long-lost
shipwrecks, to image the ocean bottom and to help find lost objects.

‘So far, we can only use a really small bandwidth,’ Kurt explained, ‘so we can
only send a small amount of information. It’s not yet possible to send high-definition
video; we still need fibre optics for robots like ROVs to achieve high-quality
imaging of the deep ocean – sometimes robots go down with 80 kilometres of cable

attached to them, along which they send back photographs and videos.’ It’s still done
in the same way that JJ sent images of the Titanic back to Alvin. Imagine if the ROVs
currently roaming around photographing Mars needed a cable to send images back to
Earth. That would be one long, long cable.