17 



Few people reali/e, ihal there are more acii\e volcanoes undervsaier ihan on land, 

 or knov\ of the great plains that dwarf those in America, or of canyons far grander 

 than the Grand Can>on, or that the might\ Rocks Mountains would fit into a 

 small portion of the Mid-Ocean Ridge. 



(;i\en the emergence of advanced robotic iechno!og\ , fiber-optics, micro- 

 processors, \inua! realit>. autonomous \ehicies, telecommunications, and man> 

 other new advances, the oceans will no longer be a barrier to human acti\it\. Ihe 

 deep ab\ss will soon become our back\ard and working at 20,000 feet whit h 

 represents ')8% of the world's o( eans will become routine. 



(iiven our exploding population and given the continued development of 

 advanced technolog\, I iruK belie\e the 21st centurj will usher in an explosion in 

 human acii\ii\ in the sea. 1 am convinced the next generation will explore more 

 of harth, that is the 71% that lies underwater, than all previous generations 

 ( ombined. 



And just as Lewis and Clark's exploration of the Louisiana Purchase led to the 

 settling of the west, the exploration of the sea will lead to its subsequent 

 (oloni/ation. 1 have no doubt of that. . 



The gathering and hunting of the living resources of the sea, an activitv 

 characteristi< of primitive societies on land and which has led to the near 

 extinction of imponant fisheries in the oceans, will be replaced at sea bv farming 

 and herding. 



Iligh-iech barbed wi'-e in the form of acoustic, thermal, or other barrier 

 techniques will emerge to control and manage the seas living resources. The same 

 debates over the destruction of the rain forest's bio-diversitv on land in favor of 

 ranching and farming will repeat itself as the great bio-diversitv of the barrier 

 reefs ot the world are threatened bv large scale farming of the sea. 



Oil and gas exploration and exploitation will continue moving into deeper and 

 deeper depths. We have alreadv discovered and mapped oil and gas reserves 

 down to depths of 12,000 feel which represents the average depth of the ocean 

 and each vear the oil industn. brings production wells on line in waters deeper 

 than the prev ious vear. 



Underwater parks, memorials and reserves will expand in size and scope until the 

 m ANIC and other historic ships like her, are easily visited b> tourists using tcle- 

 operaled robots from the comfort of their home based telecommunications center. 



When ships and other pieces of human hisior> fall into the deep sea, thev enter a 

 deep Iree/e: characterized bv eternal darkness, freezing temperatures, and 

 enormous pressures. Some estimate that there is more human historv preserved 

 in Dave's |ones locker than ail of the museums in the world combined. 



During the six centuries that marked the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, 

 Imperial Roman lost more than 10,000 commercial ships in the deep waters of the 

 IvTrhenian Sea, a small sea off the west coast of Italy. We arc only now beginning 

 to explore those waters. 



The Black Sea and its anaerobic bottom water will get up some of the oldest and 

 best preserved wooden ships in the world, perhaps lost at a similar time when 



