Advances in Ocean Exploration

The ocean covers more than 70% of the Earth’s surface and encompasses 99% of its habitable volume, yet is largely unexplored. However, new technologies, approaches, and a growing recognition of the ocean’s role in sustaining the health, wealth, and security of modern society has spurred a rapid acceleration in ocean exploration and discovery. Past ocean exploration efforts have fundamentally impacted our view of the bounds of life on the planet, the human-ocean relationship, and the Earth’s inner workings, and many more discoveries yet remain. The varied stakeholders for ocean exploration are exemplified in many of the UN Ocean Decade challenges that require generating baseline knowledge to expose ocean regions and processes not yet constrained. As more of the deep ocean is explored, we gain important insight into scientifically and societally relevant questions including the distribution of ocean organisms and ecosystems, seafloor mineralization, chemical cycling, and the role of the oceans in global climate.

Ocean exploration benefits from deep integration across disciplinary boundaries and careful coordination between stakeholders and explorers. This volume brings together scientists, engineers, and educators across disciplinary boundaries towards the common goal of mapping and characterizing unknown parts of the ocean. To meet the tremendous challenge of exploring the world's oceans will require the incorporation of new technologies and approaches that enhance the efficiency of exploration, adopt the latest developments in autonomy, and recognize the value of ocean exploration for society’s benefit. This current topic provides an overview of the latest data, results, and innovations along with an assessment of the current gaps in ocean exploration in order to focus the community’s efforts and enhance the spread of current innovations.

We invite contributions that describe advances in ocean exploration including, but not limited to:
• Assessments of and novel approaches to identifying exploration gaps and targets
• Descriptions of novel vehicle systems that utilize autonomy and artificial intelligence to enhance ocean exploration.
• Development of new sensors and samplers that offer opportunities for scaling up ocean exploration and minimizing impact to ocean environments.
• Approaches to accessing difficult-to-reach and challenging subsea environments for exploration.
• The synergies of combining uncrewed systems with human expertise.
• New methods for analyzing and interpreting ocean data that create new scientific outcomes and enhance data use.
• Approaches to engaging a more diverse ocean exploration community including the indigenous communities adjacent to ocean exploration targets.
• Evaluations of ocean exploration impact on issues of high societal relevance.