Looking for Monterey Canyon maps a few weeks ago to get some background on my NaNoWriMo retelling of The Little Mermaid, I came across this fascinating news: Project will cable up ocean floor.
Electricians prefer to keep power cords dry as a rule. But in Monterey, California, scientists and engineers are hopeful that immersing electrical cable off the coast will profoundly improve how the oceans are studied.
This week [note: this was published in March 2007], a team from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) will lay 52km (32 miles) of electrical cable from a research station on shore to a shelf 900m (3,000ft) below the sea's surface.
The thick cable will send power to, and return data from, a variety of research instruments - to be added later this year - that will sit on Smooth Ridge, a plateau at the edge of Monterey Canyon, the largest and deepest submarine canyon off the continental West Coast.
And look, isn't this MBARI map fantastic? I don't dive (heck, I don't even swim well), but the Monterey Canyon fascinates me to no end.
I get nightmares when I think of life beneath the sea....amazing how the Elkhorn Slough is a prelude to all that....
Posted by: Joel | Nov 27, 2007 at 04:22 PM