Mere weeks after filmmaker James Cameron plunged to the deepest reaches of the ocean and at the same time that China is testing a new submersible in undersea mining grounds 600 miles south of Hawaii, federal funding is in jeopardy for the only two U.S. deep-diving research submersibles in the Pacific.
The Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory said its Pisces IV and V — two of only eight science submersibles in the world that can dive deeper than 1,500 meters (4,921 feet) — normally conduct 70 to 80 dives a year, with half to two-thirds of those dives research-focused and the remainder commercial jobs.
Past dives have yielded the discovery that some deep-sea corals up to 10,000 years old are the oldest living organisms on the planet, said John Wiltshire, the Hawaii lab’s director.
In 2002, during test and training dives off southern Oahu, the lab’s two submersibles found a 78-foot Japanese midget submarine in 1,300 feet of water which had been part of the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.
The discovery of the sunken sub, hit by a round that punched through its conning tower, confirmed what the destroyer USS Ward had reported before the aerial attack began but higher command did not believe: that it had fired on a Japanese submarine in the defensive sea area.
Since October, however, the lab has conducted no research dives, and says it can’t afford to for the remainder of the calendar year — a first in its 31-year history — because of deep funding cuts to its operation.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which finances the bulk of the University of Hawaii lab’s efforts, has zeroed out funding in fiscal 2013 for the National Undersea Research Program, which includes the Hawaii lab and five others around the country.
Those research facilities already are on "life support funding or less" for the current fiscal year, the Hawaii lab said.
The Hawaii undersea center has seen its NOAA funding drop from about $2.9 million in past years to $1.4 million for the current 2012 federal fiscal year, Wiltshire said.
"Basically, what this means is that all of these (undersea research) centers, including us with the $1.4 million, can basically pay the staff salaries for the year but can’t do any programs," Wiltshire said.
Three employees so far have been laid off from the Hawaii lab, leaving a staff of 20, he said.
While research dives have ground to a halt, commercial contract work, with each contract paying for a specific dive, has helped keep the Hawaii operation going.
The Hawaii lab mounted a petition drive to gain support for restored federal funding, and plans to deliver about 1,300 signatures this week to Congress and Jane Lubchenco, undersecretary of commerce for oceans and the atmosphere.
"For a relatively small (approximately) $3 million per year, this type of work can continue," the Hawaii lab said in its petition.
NOAA calls the National Undersea Research Program a "lower-priority function" in its portfolio of research activities.
David Miller, a NOAA spokesman, said in an email to the Star-Advertiser that the undersea research program faces termination "as part of the effort to make tough choices that save taxpayer dollars."
NOAA’s 2013 budget seeks $5.06 billion, an increase of $153.9 million above fiscal 2012.
Wiltshire said NOAA has decided to buy two weather satellites because of changing weather patterns, and those satellites cost hundreds of millions of dollars each.
"So in order to buy those, basically, NOAA has to take money out of other programs," Wiltshire said. "NOAA is essentially closing other programs to pay that bill." NOAA did not respond to a request for comment about the satellite purchase.
A bit of breathing room could come for the Hawaii lab in the form of a U.S. Senate spending committee’s April 19 proposal to devote $4 million in 2013 to "consolidate" undersea operations in Hawaii and Mississippi.
Even if Hawaii gets half that amount, it’s still less than the lab needs, Wiltshire said.
The committee, which said it supports termination of the National Undersea Research Program, also asked NOAA to provide an inventory of all assets that are part of the program and a plan for either "purging or maintaining" the items from that inventory.
On March 26, "Titanic" director James Cameron generated renewed interest in the deep with his 6.8-mile solo descent to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the ocean’s deepest point.
But scientists acknowledge that undersea research hasn’t caught the public’s attention the way space travel did.
Famed oceanographer Sylvia Earle, speaking on National Public Radio on April 20, said she wouldn’t take a penny from space exploration, "but we need equal support, at least, for this part of the solar system."
Earle called for continued funding of the National Undersea Research Program, saying "it’s just inexcusable that we would allow this support to fade away on our watch when we need so much to explore the ocean."
The Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory, which gets about $200,000 a year in state funding, said it has studied the Loihi submarine volcano southeast of Hawaii island for nearly 25 years, documenting the growth of a new Hawaiian island and investigating the tsunami risk from collapse events such as one in 1996.
Since 1981, lab-sponsored researchers have spent nearly 9,000 hours underwater around the Pacific, the organization said.
Submersible contract projects coming up include checks in June on seawater pipes used by the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority off Hawaii island and an inspection of military chemical weapons dumping sites in the fall.
Manned submersibles are expensive to operate, and the Hawaii lab in August is getting a remotely operated vehicle that can descend to more than 3.5 miles as a complement to the two submersibles, Wiltshire said.
The Hawaii lab gets anywhere from $300,000 to $1 million a year in contract jobs — not enough to run the lab, Wiltshire said.
Oil companies are moving into deeper water, and China has tested a new manned deep-diving submersible, the Jiaolong, in a mineral claims area about 600 miles south of Hawaii, he said.
"That’s another thing that we need submersibles for — so we can go out and see what’s going on and what’s affected by some of this stuff," Wiltshire said.
Oceanographers say remotely operated vehicles can’t provide the situational awareness or testing capabilities that a manned submersible can. Wiltshire calls it a "3-D sense of the world."
"In a submersible you have a sense of the currents, and if there are underwater vents, you can hear them as well as have a sense of what the spatial distribution of an area is like," Wiltshire said.
