An X Prize for Going Deep

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The Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE seeks to usher in a new era of deep exploration of the oceans.  This will both help with/foster both basic and applied research.  Not the least of which will be to boost our understanding of baseline conditions before subsequent impacts from deep sea mining of oil/gas extraction.

Formal Announcment

Here is the full text of the announcement from yesterday’s announcement at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall meeting in San Francisco:

At a keynote address today during the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco, Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO of XPRIZE, announced the launch of the $7M Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, a three-year global competition challenging teams to advance ocean technologies for rapid and unmanned ocean exploration. As part of the total $7M prize purse, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is offering a $1M bonus prize to teams that demonstrate their technology can “sniff out” a specified object in the ocean through biological and chemical signals. David Schewitz, Shell vice president of geophysics for the Americas, and Richard Spinrad, chief scientist at NOAA, joined Diamandis on stage to launch the new competition.

“Our oceans cover two-thirds of our planet’s surface and are a crucial global source of food, energy, economic security, and even the air we breathe, yet 95 percent of the deep sea remains a mystery to us,” Diamandis said. “In fact, we have better maps of the surface of Mars than we do of our own seafloor. The Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE will address a critical ocean challenge by accelerating innovation to further explore one of our greatest unexplored frontiers.”

The three-year competition includes nine months for team registration, 12 months for initial solution development and 18 months to complete two rounds of testing and judging by an expert panel. In each round, teams will complete a series of tasks, including making a bathymetric map (a map of the sea floor), producing high-resolution images of a specific object, and identifying archeological, biological or geological features. Teams also must show resiliency and durability by proving they can operate their technologies, deployed from the shore or air, at a depth of up to 4,000 meters.

“Spurring innovation and creating radical breakthroughs in ocean discovery are what excite us about collaborating with XPRIZE,” Schewitz said. “Shell recognizes the need to leverage the full power of innovation: the capacity for doing things differently and better than before.”

A $4M Grand Prize and $1M Second Place Prize will be awarded to the two teams that receive the top scores for demonstrating the highest resolution seafloor mapping, after meeting all minimum requirements for speed, autonomy and depth. Up to 10 teams that proceed to Round 2 will split a $1M milestone prize purse. And the $1M NOAA bonus prize will be awarded to the team that can trace a chemical or biological signal to its source.

“The goal of the $1M NOAA bonus prize is to identify technology that can aid in detecting sources of pollution, enable rapid response to leaks and spills, identify hydrothermal vents and methane seeps, as well as track marine life for scientific research and conservation efforts,” said Spinrad.

The Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE is part of the 10-year XPRIZE Ocean Initiative – a commitment made to launch five multi-million dollar prizes by 2020 to address critical ocean challenges and make the oceans healthy, valued and understood. XPRIZE awarded the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup XCHALLENGE in 2011 and the Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE in July 2015.

For more information, and to register your intent to compete, visit oceandiscovery.xprize.org.

About the XPRIZE

Founded in 1995, XPRIZE offers so-called Grand Challenges by creating and managing large-scale, high-profile, incentivized prizes in five areas (think lots of testosterone in the guise of learning something…very silicon valley): Learning; Exploration; Energy & Environment; Global Development; and Life Sciences.

Active prizes include the $30M Google Lunar XPRIZE, the $20M NRG Cosia Carbon XPRIZE, the $15M Global Learning XPRIZE, the $10M Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE, and the $7M Adult Literacy XPRIZE.

The Loot

 

The $7 million prize purse will be awarded as follows:

  • Grand Prize: $4 million will be awarded to the first place team that receives the top score that meets or exceeds all minimum requirements.
  • Second Place Prize: $1 million will be awarded to the second place team that receives the second highest score that meets or exceeds all minimum requirements.
  • Milestone Prize: $1 million will be split among the top (up to) 10 teams from round 1.
  • NOAA Bonus Prize: $1 million will be awarded in round 1 to the team that successfully identifies the source of an established biological or chemical signal. This will roll over to round 2 if there are no winners in round 1. Participation in the bonus prize will be voluntary for registered teams.

 

Competition Summary

 

Teams will compete in two rounds for a total prize of $7 million:
Round 1 testing will be conducted at 2,000 meters depth.
Round 2 testing will be conducted at 4,000 meters depth.

For both rounds, Teams must launch from shore or air and, with restricted human intervention, their entries will have limited number of hours to explore the competition area to produce:

  1. a high resolution bathymetric map
  2. images of the specified object
  3. identify archeological, biological, or geological features
  4. track a chemical or biological signal to its source (bonus prize)

This Saturday come see us at Ledbetter Beach!

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This weekend come see our booth at the Lakey Peterson Keiki Bowl

Saturday December 19th! IMG_7799

 

Perspectives: Greater than the Sum of Their Parts

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Research is inherently broad, and it certainly does not always lead to the destination originally sought after. It does, however, pose a particular question (that is, whatever is being researched). This is what makes research and understanding go so well together. Understanding thrives on that focused ambiguity, as it grows from a directive but is only capable of doing so when not caged. This could easily be seen in our time on Santa Rosa Island with each professor.

The ball park was the nature of Santa Rosa, particularly its biodiversity and how restoration is going to play into that. each professor had their own respective discipline, ranging from art to archaeology, but they all provided equally valid insight to the understanding of Santa Rosa.

Professor Perry, the anthropologist, gave insight to how things were, and that information is valuable to see how the island reached its current state. Professor Allison and Cause, those more focused in the area of life science, reflected on the present, taking from the past and projecting for the future. The artist, Matthew Fermanski, did somewhat of a collaborative of all aspects, obtaining an understanding of the entirety of the island. All of the research done by the professors would lead back to the main idea, regardless of these varying perspectives. I feel an important note to make is that all of these inputs are necessary for an optimal output. While having any one of these alone is fine, the collaborative interpretation of the question (that being the one on biodiversity and stability) produces much greater results; the product of the whole is greater than the sum of their parts.

Give another question, perhaps reintroducing a species such as the island fox. Every perspective may provide valuable information as to how, when, and where is optimal to do so. Cause may be able to provide suitable areas to reintroduce the species, and Perry could tell where foxes were once prominent. With a combination of these two perspectives we would have a a better answer than if one acted alone. In fact, I am hard pressed to think of a suitable outcome without tackling the issue in an interdisciplinary manner.

All of these perspectives and disciplines are required to make an astute solution. Without any one piece, the product regresses into something lesser than what it could be. Interdisciplinary tactics allow for a critically thought out outcome; critical thinking is innately interdisciplinary, for the notion of it is to think out side the box. A very simple way to do so is by shifting one’s own perspective to another. Think about how someone else may do it, and aggregate that to your own understanding. In doing so, one not only improve your handling of the question, but to their understanding as a whole. Growth is an invaluable trait to possess.

Fall 2015 Wrap Up!

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IMG_0842 IMG_0840No, this is not CSUCI!!

Thanksgiving trip to snowy beautiful Oregon- apparently this early 1+ foot of snow was not the norm for the area… maybe early sign of impending El Niño??

Fitting that I should experience such extreme weather as I continue the quest to get the CSUCI weather station off the ground. As the Fall 2015 semester winds to a close we have made great progress, but there is still much work to be done. Early builds of the CI Weather website are in the works, and test subjects will be needed for opinion surveys very soon – stay posted…

I hope that everyone is feeling good about their respective semesters, and I know we are all excited to get into Spring, get our work done and make it happen. We have a great community at CI, and I am proud to be a part of it.

Cheers to all!!

Life: A Narrative

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Nature, I have learned, is brutally honest. There is nothing withheld to the viewer; it does not boast nor coddle, and it is never disarming with either its unpredictability or uniformity. Nature is revealing — it is love. Perhaps that is why Thoreau was so smitten with it; nature tells its story unremittingly, regardless of the listener — it does not, in fact, even need a listener. It continues its tale in the face of opposition and adapts accordingly. The only thing required is for one to choose to listen.

 

When we arrived on Santa Rosa Island I numbed myself to all expectancies, and I am very happy for that. I have taken from life that bias (something entirely different than conviction) shrouds and negates any understanding that may be gained from an affair. With that perspective in mind, I gathered a great understanding from the faculty.

 

With Matt Furmanski, an art professor, we examined how certain aspects such as the wind influenced the formation of the island, and how that contributes to the story, or narrative, of the island. matt spoke of how he unfettered buoys with lights attached just off the shoreline and took long-exposure photographs of their routes. this gave him an interpretation of the tide, as well as an artistic perspective on nature.

 

We also took part in surveying the frequency of certain organisms on the shoreline with the island’s primary caretaker Hanna Cause, an environmental scientist. We would progressively venture further into the tide — yet another interpretation of it. This time, however, the examination was more clinical; it fed to the environmental perspective regarding nature.

 

Both of these, however different, held that commonality: interpretation. This is the most enlightening thing I took from the island. In one of the most recent publications of Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, there is an introduction written by Neil Gaimon that discourses the point I am discussing rather well. In short, Gaimon gives the very profound notion that if someone expresses their understanding of a narrative, then they are probably right; however, if they say that is all it is about, then they are probably wrong. Life is one big narrative, wherein there lies a finitely infinite number narratives. It is the narrative collective, nature being one of many. Just as Matt and Cause had their different, valid interpretations of the tide and its effects, so too does anyone else. That is the importance of interdisciplinary understanding. Humanity thrives on understanding other narratives, for without it we would move about aimlessly in a tiny sandbox of our own ego. That understanding is used to build upon one’s own narrative and in turn help others expand theirs. It is a cycle of improvement, and a very lenient, forgiving one at that. Nature is a microcosm for that pure narrative of life, and, just like nature, it requires willing, immersed participants. To be cliché, understanding is within the eye of the beholder, though the question remains in whether or not one will utilize that.

Update

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This week all I have done for my capstone is work on my introduction. I will not be back in the classroom until February, that makes me sad. Winter break is almost here but this is when I will get a lot of work done.

Capstone Intro Is ALL Done!

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Here’s my abstract:

“For many of us, water simply flows from a faucet, and we think little about it beyond this point of contact. We have lost a sense of respect for the wild river, for the complex workings of a wetland, for the intricate web of life that water supports.” Sandra Postel from Last Oasis: Facing Water Scarcity. (1997). This paper and subsequent monitoring will try to begin to understand the complex workings of the wetland marsh systems located on Santa Rosa Island in the Channel Islands National Park. Furthermore, the purpose of the monitoring protocol will be to provide a more in depth understanding of the functions, structure, and ecological significance of this marsh system.

There are typically two, occasionally three coastal, apparently tidal marshes, which flow out of Old Ranch Canyon, Old Ranch House Canyon, and Quemada Canyon watersheds. These are ephemeral streams on a semi-arid Southern California Island that receives only 15 inches of rain a year (NOAA weather data 2015). Even though these watersheds are some of the larger streams on Santa Rosa, the lagoons do dry up, especially during this time of extreme drought. This vital signs monitoring project will perform water quality and temporal-seasonal change surveys on a long-term periodic scale. This protocol is in efforts to help the National Parks Service and other ecological surveyors better understand the history and the future of a semi-arid climate marsh and watershed system. The long-term monitoring program being implemented for the marsh systems on Santa Rosa Island must look at a number of parameters to determine the health of this ecosystem along with its potential productivity and ecosystem services. By deploying the salinity, temperature, and other water quality parameters, along with vegetation and aerial photo studies, we can get a significant snapshot of the changes and varying influences of the marshes.

 

Finishing up my intro

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I am almost done with my first draft introduction to my research. More updates to come during winter break.

Presented at RJ Frank Middle School

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On Thursday December 10, 2015, Brandon and I presented an overview of our capstone to about 30 students at RJ Frank Middle School. We discussed where the Torrey pines are found, their population growth on Santa Rosa Island, causes of population decline, Geographic Information Science, and germination. At the end of this presentation, we had everyone plant their own seeds to grow at home. The students had a choice between peas, watermelon or rosemary to plant. The most popular seed was watermelon.

 

Torrey pine seeds

Should be surfing

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