Honolulu Star-Bulletin Local News

Richard Cooper, left, and Alexander Malahoff talk about the Pacific Ocean part of a $500 million plan for undersea bases.
Photo by Terry Luke, Star-Bulletin



Deep sea 'space station' is in the works

An undersea base is envisioned
on Penguin Bank in the
Molokai Channel

By Helen Altonn
Star-Bulletin



Fed up with federal bureaucracy, a Connecticut marine scientist has tapped private sources for $500 million to develop ocean bases in Connecticut, Hawaii and elsewhere.

"We're attempting to establish a war chest to take away the vagaries of miniscule budgets," Richard A. Cooper, National Undersea Research Center director, University of Connecticut, said in an interview.

He has teamed up with Alexander Malahoff, his University of Hawaii counterpart, and other scientists with dreams of divers, submersibles and robots exploring the ocean environment from sea floor bases.

Cooper is here "to strategize" with Malahoff, Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory director. They also were to meet with UH officials and Gov. Ben Cayetano.

About $500 million has been pledged for the ocean base program in a "no-strings-attached" grant over two years from international financiers, Cooper said. "I'm not telling you the (first) check is in the mail yet but it will be in the next couple months."

He plans to reinvest about $100 million in international financing, leverage that to $1 billion, then use the interest to support ocean activities, he said.

Ocean Base One, first in the envisioned ocean station network, will be developed at a 600-foot depth at the edge of the continental shelf in Long Island Sound, Cooper said.

Most of the money will go into proving the concept with engineering, design, construction, shallow water testing and subsidies for user groups, he said.

Cooper expects it will take about four to five years. A facility also will be set up to train three 30-person teams to live in the ocean, he said.

Ocean Base Two would be established on Penguin Bank in the Molokai Channel, Malahoff said. It's close enough to Oahu to lay a power cable and about the same depth as the continental shelf, although it can drop deeper, he said.

He foresees big fish farm experiments on the bank because of its nutrients, clear water and enormous size - about 400 to 500 square nautical miles.

Unlike the space program, which doesn't offer public rides, visitors and students will be welcome at the ocean stations, the scientists said.

"When the program is announced internationally, it will attract thousands of students to the universities partnering in this," Cooper said. "Youth education and outreach will be an important part of the program."

The University of Connecticut's Marine Sciences & Technology Center, which Cooper also directs, is working with scientists, educators, engineers, the Navy and marine industry to develop Ocean Base One.

It is viewed as "an ocean equivalent to a space station, providing the focal point for a national vision of ocean exploration comparable to that for space exploration."

Although emphasis will be on research, Cooper said education, ocean technology and marine industrial development also will be promoted.

The ocean is the planet's primary life-support system, he pointed out. "It is not only a unique environment, but critically important to long-term existence on earth." Yet, little is known about how it functions, he said.

"It is a vision," Malahoff added. "We look at occupation of Mars, but we haven't looked at occupancy of the ocean floor, although it covers two-thirds of the earth's surface."

Cooper conceived the privately supported program to escape "the baloney" of federal bureaucracy, as well as dwindling money for the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration's undersea research centers.

HURL's funding was slashed this year from $3.8 million to $1.8 million; Connecticut's from about $3 million to $1.8 million, the undersea directors said. They commended Sen. Daniel Inouye and other congressional supporters for keeping the programs alive.

"Our country has kind of stuck its head in the ground in terms of undersea research for 25 years," Cooper said.

"A few of us in the hierarchy after 30 to 40 years have convinced financiers we know what we're doing. This is the avant garde of what we expect to happen."

Teams of 30 people will be able to live below the sea "to do what military scientists have been trying to do from surface ships for 150 years," he said.

"We're testing the concept of small communities living on the ocean floor for extended periods of time."

Cooper predicts a significant economic impact, with about 2,000 or more jobs involved in construction and operation of each base, research submersibles and support activities.

He said he's been working "discreetly" on the concept for two or three years with Malahoff, Earle and Robert Ballard, oceanographer who discovered the sunken Titanic.

"We're taking a giant step in capability from what shallow water habitats are doing," said Cooper, noting he's lived on the ocean floor about six times in different programs.

"It's exciting the youth of the country. Sylvia calls it, 'An Earth shine on the ocean.'"




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