When the drill unit sank on Thursday, we immediately and intensely investigated by remotely operated vehicles the entire 5, 000 feet of pipe that's on the floor of the ocean.
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Locating a ship resting on the floor of the ocean for many decades is somewhat different than finding a submersible to get to that depth and plugging many leaks in a riser pipe and in a blowout preventer.
They picked up critters from as deep as 6km, and they did so using both typical trawling nets and a special box that was designed to scoop up a slab of ocean floor along with a slice of undisturbed water from immediately above it.
Over the weekend, it was also reported that Japanese experts have found a large deposit of rare earth minerals on the floor of the Pacific Ocean.
The company says surveys have revealed huge numbers of so-called nodules - small lumps of rock rich in valuable metals - lying on the ocean floor south of Hawaii and west of Mexico.
BBC: UK Seabed Resources joins deep-ocean mineral-mining rush
The fact that Mr Becker is but one of a handful of underwater treasure hunters now scanning the ocean floor for traces of the wreck, would have saddened her greatly, they say.
The volcanoes are strung across several thousand kilometres of ocean floor and are moving westward on the Pacific tectonic plate at up to 6cm per year.
The Knicks and the Nets aren't exactly antagonists it's often been an asymmetrical rivalry, with one club up as the other struggled, or both rattling around the ocean floor of the Eastern Conference.
The need to drill for oil in 5000 feet of water and 20, 000 feet below the ocean floor is a dramatic illustration of how the low hanging fruit are long gone and the lengths to which our addiction to oil will drive us.
They are also engaged in ongoing research into the amount of methane hydrate under this area of the ocean floor.
How about wall maps, 3-D relief maps, world maps, classroom maps, topographical maps, satellite maps, special projections, even maps of the ocean floor?
But since the early 20th century, a slew of previously untouched shipwrecks have been discovered, uncovering veritable underwater time capsules and breathtaking views of ocean-floor wreckage.
Things get murkier still when oil companies drill deep below the surface of the ocean floor, since even robots can't go down there to see what's going on.
That displacement of the ocean floor also displaces ocean water.
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Ninety percent of the ocean floor has not even been charted, and while we have been to the moon, the technology to explore the ocean's floors is still being developed.
Once there, they use aerial photography and remote cameras in combination with depth-finding and global-positioning satellite technology (as well as some first-hand testing of the waves) to measure the waves and map the contours of the ocean floor under the breaks.
But the harm they do as a destroyer of habitat, by ripping up corals and sponges, and wrecking the nurseries of fish species that grow very slowly, seems out of proportion to any gain from scraping the ocean floor: one zoologist has compared it to cutting down virgin forests, full of rare species, to collect squirrels.
These breakthroughs allow oil to be sucked economically from far beneath the ocean floor, and out of depleted and formerly abandoned wells.
The ocean floor off the coast of Papua New Guinea is expected to be mined for copper by the end of the decade.
BP, which had been leasing the rig from Transocean, says the safety device that was supposed to cut oil flow on the ocean floor in the event of a well blowout did not perform its function.
Transocean ( RIG - news - people ), says the safety device that was supposed to cut oil flow on the ocean floor in the event of a well blowout did not perform its function.
"I'm excited to report that, using state-of-the-art deep sea sonar, the team has found the Apollo 11 engines lying 14, 000 feet below the surface, and we're making plans to attempt to raise one or more of them from the ocean floor, " the billionaire investor and entrepreneur wrote.
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In hopes of uncovering more about the effects of glaciers on the ocean floor, as well as details about the living creatures that inhabit said areas, UK scientists are carting the machine aboard the RSS James Clark Ross as they head for the Marguerite Bay area on the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula.
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In a Trincomalee town hall with views of the glittering Indian Ocean, more than 80 families sleep on a concrete floor amid battered cardboard boxes of possessions.
"Up to 700, 000 tcf of methane hydrates lie beneath the ocean floor and the Arctic, " Mulva said.
At these depths, everything must be done with remote-control robots that install the blowout preventers, submersible pumps and other devices to manage the flow of oil and water on the ocean floor.
These organisms, which have fundamentally different metabolisms to normal microbes, are found in hydrothermal vents on the deep-ocean floor and in rocks and springs hundreds of metres below the surface of the Earth.
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Present-day fishing trawlers in the North Sea occasionally dredge up the bones and tusks of the mastodons and other game from the ocean floor.
Under the UN's Convention on the Law of the Sea, mining rights on the ocean floor are controlled by a little-known body, the International Seabed Authority, which since 2001 has issued 13 licences - with another six in prospect.
BBC: UK Seabed Resources joins deep-ocean mineral-mining rush
Every long stretch of fiber, especially if it lies on the ocean floor, needs these lasers by the thousands.
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