Name: Ocean Alive! Full Program
Uploaded: 2014-04-25T03:50:22.000Z
Duration: 25 min 1 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

In the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of British Columbia re two underwater observatories -- NEPTUNE

and VENUS They use the latest technology to make amazing discoveries about the largely

unexplored world beneath the waves. Discover the ocean. Understand the planet.

Hello, I'm Sarika Cullis-Suzuki. As an ocean scientist, I am fascinated about the underwater

world. Today, researchers are using new technologies to understand our ever changing and fragile

Northeast Pacific Ocean. I'd like to share with you some of their exciting discoveries.

As we embark on our exploration of the vast ocean, let's consider how we can gather information

about a place that is often deep, dark and dangerous. Let's find out how ocean observatories

Ocean Networks Canada is a unique facility in the world. And it's unique because it is

a place where we can measure the changes in the ocean 24/7 in the Northeast Pacific and,

what is called here, the Salish Sea. Ocean Networks Canada operates NEPTUNE and VENUS

- 2 cabled observatories off the west coast of British Columbia. The observatories supply

power and internet connectivity to a broad suite of sub- sea instruments from the coast to the

deep sea. They support research on complex ocean and earth processes in ways not previously

So it's very different from other kinds of observatories, it's not one instrument at

one time in one place in the ocean it's persistent in a place where the ocean changes over these

instruments and we have instruments in the water column, on the seafloor and beneath the

seafloor to really understand that incredibly connected system.

These underwater labs are bringing us huge volumes of data. What are researchers doing

Ocean Networks Canada has a pretty broad range of science disciplines that are working on

the data and instruments from both NEPTUNE Canada and VENUS and those are related to

everything from earthquakes to tsunamis to ecosystems.

We are also studying marine mammals, we are studying sounds in the ocean we are studying

wave energy and how that impacts things like release of gas hydrates on the seafloor.

It is one of the most diverse facilities of its kind studying almost every aspect of

We were not only here to support excellent science, but we were also here to realize

benefits for Canada. It relates to how it helps to stimulate commercial opportunity

and how the public can better understand what we're doing and how the science can inform

The role of the center is to help grow the ocean technology sector in Canada and we do

that through mechanisms like the technology demonstration facility where we help develop

new sensor technologies and also we help develop new ocean observing systems both within Canada

One of the major accomplishments obviously has been to build the system. There were many

doubters quite frankly who said this can't be done.

The fact that we've done it, the fact that we've been operating now successfully with

high reliability of most of those systems for the last several years is a testimony

We are so excited about the accomplishments of Ocean Networks Canada but we have aspirations

to see it grow even further. Already the world is coming to the University of Victoria and

Ocean Networks Canada to understand how observatories operate and we know that people are interested

in putting these observatories in virtually everywhere in the world.

Looks like there's a lot going on at the lab. Coming up next, let's put ONC to work and

see what we can discover about the ocean.

Here on the West Coast we hear a lot about tsunamis. As we know from recent events in

Japan and southeast Asia, tsunamis can be incredibly destructive.

So, what exactly are tsunamis and where do they come from?

A tsunami is what we refer to as a body wave. It affects the entire water column in an ocean

or lake. It is essentially is a wave phenomenon in that energy is propagated away from a source.

I kind of, because they've been so destructive, refer to them as stealth killers.

The seismic ones generated by earthquakes when you displace the bottom. Off Sumatra

in 2004, that huge tsunami that was generated there was displacements of five to ten metres

in the bottom where suddenly the bottom goes up on one side and down on the other and all

that water, two thousand metres of water, is displaced. Huge waves are generated. So

that's earthquake generated tsunamis, seismically generated tsunamis. They happen everywhere

The other kind are landslide generated tsunamis. So a failure of the coast line or some kind

of big slump that fails and it pushes the water ahead of it as it fails or a mountain

But about eighty percent of the big tsunamis in the world are generated in the Pacific

Ocean and the reason that tsunamis occur in these environments is that's where big earthquakes

occur, along the Pacific Ring of Fire. It's called that because these earthquakes are

We get these very explosive, fiery eruptions that occur because these plates are in contact

with one another and generating the forces that can create both earthquakes and volcanic

The speed of a tsunami is basically set by the depth of the ocean so if we use an average

depth of the ocean about five kilometres it's basically the speed of a jet. So that's 700-800

You're on an aircraft coming from Japan for example towards Canada during the 2011 Japanese

tsunami your jet plane would just be able to keep up with that wave as it crossed the

ocean. It took it nine hours and fifty-seven minutes to get to Bamfield on the west coast

So this massive wave can move at the speed of a jet! What are the odds of a tsunami landing

here? And if one does, what should we do?

The likelihood of a tsunami coming to Vancouver Island is actually very good. We live in a

very seismically active region and so we are at a high risk of tsunamis. So any Pacific

based earthquake, and large Pacific based earthquake could cause a tsunami which could

We have developed with Rick Thomson very very precise sensors on the bottom of the ocean

that actually measure the actual pressure of the water which is really equivalent to

the height and we can precisely measure to sub millimeter detail in 3 kilometers

And so with those sensors we can then begin to use models to predict the speed and direction

and the height of the wave that will impact our coast.

If there is a mega thrust earthquake off our coast we will have a major tsunami and we

want to be able to provide much more direct warning. Now we wouldn't be doing this directly

we have to work with our emergency management teams here in British Columbia, but that's

The information and data that's collected from Ocean Networks Canada helps emergency

managers to understand what kind of tsunami might be coming in at any given time.

We have the ability with the technology we have, to do an early detection of an earthquake

when it first hits. We may be able to give places in Vancouver and Victoria a thirty

to forty second warning of major ground shaking hitting.

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Ocean Alive! Full Program

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