Mission & Project Info | NOAA’s Aquarius Undersea Laboratory
Mission Blog

Teens4Oceans (T4O) is a coalition of students, scientists, and non-profit organizations whose mission is to increase our understanding of America’s ocean heritage through student-driven research and conservation. Teens4oceans’s goal is to empower our next generation to become impassioned stewards for their oceans through science research, inquiry-based learning, and philanthropic initiatives.

In addition to working with schools around the nation to identify problems and research questions associated with local watersheds and coastal marine ecosystems, T4O helps students gain meaningful experiences in the field to address their research and find solutions to identified problems. The organization also designs, deploys and maintains science nodes, comprised of robotic underwater cameras and data acquisition systems in large marine ecosystems unique to the United States. The goal is to allow young students, and the public, to appreciate the rich diversity of organisms and habitats that make up our waterways and coastal systems.

T4O is excited to work with the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Aquarius Reef Base to deploy Reef Cams on the Undersea Habitat at Key Largo, Florida. Students from Kent Denver School formed a T4O crew and surveyed the Aquarius Habitat and surrounding reef on December 16th and 17th of December 2010. Examining the current structural infrastructure will allow the students to design two camera systems that will hopefully be deployed early in the New Year. The Aquarius Habitat offers a unique opportunity for Teens4oceans, as four key elements exist at the research facility that have limited the deployment of a camera on a deep-water reef: security, high-bandwidth network, power, and regular maintenance visits.

In addition to streaming high-definition video from the structure 24/7 anywhere within the local area network, including at the Eco-Discovery Center in Key West and the Key Largo NOAA facility, Teens4oceans will work with its partners to disseminate the content around the nation. The group will build user-generated content and interpretive materials to divulge the beauty and wonder of America’s only living reef.

The Wall Street Journal recently visited Aquarius Reef Base to cover the November mission. Read the article and check out the video below:

Read the full article here and check out the video below.

Mr. Kallenbach asks: Can you give me an idea about what changed the mission to a surface set-up rather than a submersion mission. This must require more work and you had prepared to be down for 7-10 days. Disappointed?

Carol Leonard asks: Was there a problem with the habitat? Why did you change this from saturation diving? We are studying diving technology in our marine science class.

Whenever you operate a system as challenging as Aquarius there is always the chance that technical issues will arise. In this situation, a system review uncovered an air storage facility that did not meet our standards. While we are confident that the flask would have performed without incident, we believed that it was prudent to take that system off-line and adequately address the issue during our extensive winter maintenance period.

The November 2010 Aquarius Mission has been modified to be a surface oriented science mission. The Aquarius team will be working with scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology to study herbivores at Conch Reef. Working from the surface, rather than saturation, will require a lot of diving and hard work by the combined team and will also mean fewer video feeds going out to the public, but we still expect an exciting and scientifically productive mission. Stay tuned to our website for updates on this exciting mission.

Saul Rosser
Operations Director