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.

Welcome to "Ocean Alive!"

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.

This is "Ocean Alive!"

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

let us visit this mysterious world.

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

possible.

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

with all this information?

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

the oceans and the seafloor beneath.

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

their knowledge of the ocean.

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

and internationally.

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

obviously to what has been accomplished.

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

in the world.

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

falls into the water.

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

also associated with active volcanoes.

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

eruptions.

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

kilometres per hour.

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

of Vancouver Island.

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

impact British Columbia's Pacific coast.

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

of water how high that wave is.

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 direction we want to go in.

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.

That's a lot. People say well that's not very much but it can turn off a valve, it can stop

trains, it can set off an alarm in schools. So there's many things we can do with that.

So we're working with a team of people in British Columbia over a five year time period to see if we can implement

something like that.

I think the most important thing about tsunamis is understanding your risks, where you live,

where you work and where you play. So if you're travelling to an area that has tsunami risks

to understand that there is a tsunami risk and then to understand what you would take,

what actions you would take to keep yourself safe in the event of a tsunami.

You're walking the beaches in Tofino and there is a big earthquake, don't even wait for any

warning just go to higher ground because you're going to have about half an hour at most three

quarters of an hour before that tsunami hits and it's going to be big on the outer coast.

Today, we've learned how underwater earthquakes generate tsunamis... next let's find out what

happens at underwater volcanoes.

Few people know that 300 kilometres off the West Coast of Vancouver Island, lies a

chain of underwater volcanoes, known as the Juan de Fuca ridge. Part of this region was

established as a Marine Protected Area in 2003. This is where we find deep-sea hydrothermal

vents.

So hydrothermal vents are located at mid ocean ridges. So picture it as seams along

a baseball and when you go away from these seams it's almost like the desert. There is

not really much life there. It's called the abyssal plain so it just looks like mud flats

going on and on and on.

When you get closer to these little seams on the baseball at the hydrothermal vents

you see an abundance of life.

Hydrothermal vents form when two plates are separating away from each other and new crust

from the Earth's centre starts migrating upwards. You'll have water that percolates through

this really super-hot crust and from pressure and both temperature it'll come back up and

start precipitating these minerals out, once it reaches that cold seafloor.

So you'll get these precipitations slowly start forming these hydrothermal chimneys

and once the temperatures as well as the right conditions are available for new animals they'll

start colonizing these hydrothermal vents.

So we can go from a volcanic eruption that essentially flattens everything to the beginnings

of a vent ecosystem with a number of species within less than a year.

They're at depths usually between fifty and one hundred metres to up to four thousand metres

below the sea surface. So basically no sun can penetrate these environments. It's in

complete darkness.

The ambient seawater is usually about two degrees at those depths but at these hydrothermal

vents you're getting these just like picture underwater volcanoes, they're spewing out these

hot vent fluids that are up to four hundred degrees Celsius in some cases.

They're extremely toxic so you have hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, methane, so for you

and I there's no way we'd be able to survive at these hydrothermal vents.

Wow, pretty extreme conditions at these deep-sea vents. How can anything actually live there?

You're on an underwater volcano where there's absolutely nothing alive and then boom you

come across this little oasis of life with colour, reds, blues and animals you've never

seen before. Everything we brought up had never been seen by a scientist before.

Bottom few hundred metres of water contains millions of larva of vent animals that have

been released by vent ecosystems in the surrounding area. These larvae are constantly looking for,

urgently looking for, a new place to settle down. They detect the vent environment, they

come in, settle down on the seafloor and transform into juveniles and then adult animals. So

they can colonize in a matter of months.

Most of the animals that live there are unusually tolerant of high temperatures, toxic hydrogen

sulfide and even heavy metals. There's a really limited number of species that can colonize

hydrothermal vents but those that can really cut it do really well. We find incredible

biomass in this environment even though there are very small number of species.

Some of the more common animals at hydrothermal vents in the North Pacific are the giant tubeworms.

These are large worms that can be up to 2 metres in length. They have no mouth, no digestive

system. The only way that they can exchange anything with the outside world is through

their gills.

They survive by the symbiotic relationship with bacteria and essentially what they do

is uptake this bacteria into an internal organ called the trophosome and the trophosome houses

all these bacteria. And if you have seen a picture of a tubeworm they have these red

bushy plumes at the anterior portion of their body and they uptake these dissolved gases

which are toxic to you and I so it would by hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide as well as

oxygen and essentially this feeds the internal bacteria that provide the sole and only nutrition

for the tube worms.

Hydrothermal vents are a highly ephemeral environment and by ephemeral I mean it's very

dynamic in vents are shutting off and then turning back on and starting up in a new location

or even vents can shut off and then turn back on again at the same location later on.

So life itself at these vents that are turning off usually end up collapsing or dying but

then you'll see them pop up at these new hydrothermal vents and recolonize new areas. So it's very

dynamic and its constantly circling around as they die out they'll recolonize new vents

again.

We've learned about hydrothermal vents and the unique species that are found there. From

the exotic, now let's take a look at animals you might have seen before... whales.

The coastal and offshore waters of British Columbia are home to many species of whales.

Let's take a closer look at the world of whales and in particular how we study them.

A whale for example with an orca it only spends probably five percent of its time at the sea

surface and since that's the only time we can really see them we are pretty limited

in terms of what we can, what we can study. They just come up, they take a breath and

then go back down so we can't really study much about their behaviour just visually.

So what we use is passive acoustics and passive acoustics means you just listen to what they

are doing down there.

We use hydrophones to study orcas because they can get a different kind of data then