Sept-Oct, 2010
Location:
Santa Catalina Island,
California, USA
Objectives:
- support the field work of leading researchers; and
- promote STEM education with local school children
UVP & SCOTT CASSELL
The Undersea Voyager Project (www.underseavoyagerproject.org) is a non-profit organization established to circumnavigate and study the Earth's oceans (27,000 miles) at depths of 100 to 1,000 feet utilizing human piloted submersibles to advance and communicate scientific understanding of the oceans.
UVP will host a consortium of scientists to learn about the ocean’s influence on climate, the populations of fished species, water quality, and presence of ghost nets and other trash.
Phase I – Lake Tahoe 2009
UVPs first mission was in May 2009 at Lake Tahoe. Scott and his team successfully made 56 dives with a submersible and identified a non-classified species of protist. They also observed an ancient forest of 3,500 year old trees still standing hundreds of feet deep, uncovered vital evidence on how they got there, and found that earthquake faults within the lake are more active than previously thought.
Phase II – Catalina 2010
UVPs second mission was to explore the waters surrounding Santa Catalina Island, a unique island ecosystem off the coast of California. During October 2010, UVP and OceanGate used Antipodes to explore various dive spots around Catalina Island and explore the waters below scuba depth to 936 feet. Six researchers and scientists joined the team to collect data and survey geological formations, brittle stars, kelp ecology, giant sea bass, sea cucumbers, and much more.
Phase III and Beyond
Future missions during UVPs five year project to circumnavigate the globe include dive sites in Sea of Cortez, Gulf of Mexico, Mediterranean Ocean, Galapagos Islands, Tahiti, and more.
Scott Cassell is an Undersea Explorer and has been diving since 1977 accumulating over 13,000 hours of dive time. He was the first person in the world to film the Giant Squid in the wild (which aired on History Channel's Monster Quest). His experience ranges from offshore exploration, inland waterway diving, sunken vessel salvage, and marine research and has undertaken work around the globe from developing programs to feed sea urchins for aquaculture, to filming Spanish Galleon shipwrecks. Regarded as an industry leader in Closed Circuit Rebreather technology, Scott is also a Merchant Marine Captain and United States Coast Guard qualified Submersible Pilot.
He has a long history of discovery and leading expeditions including recently (March 2010) an Expedition for National Geographic.
He holds the world record for Longest Distance Traveled by a Diver (52 miles in 9.5 hours non-stop saturation dive). Invented and used a diver tow - glider to cover more range for open-sea underwater filming. The world record tested the proof of concept and used the event to raise money for a children's charity.
As a researcher he was the Principal Investigator on field studies on Humboldt squid (Dosidicus gigas) for 15 years. He was the first person to perform studies (working unofficially at Scripps) on how to capture, place and maintain Dosidicus gigas in captivity for aquarium public display. He performed experiments on the optimum temperature range by observing the haemoglobin concentration with a cyan haematin method determining when the creatures suffer heat stress.
Working with the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach's Steve Blair, they performed experiments on Dosidicus gigas including dissolved oxygen metabolic uptake, placing specimens under anesthesia & reviving them and captive feeding methods.
He was also the first (and only) person to use cameras mounted on living Dosidicus gigas he captured to gather images of courting, cannibalism and, prey stalking behavior and established shoal densities. He was first to use an endoscope on and successfully filmed internal organ system function including the three hearts beating, degulidation, esophageal peristalsis and the oxygenation of cyanoglobin blood through gill-based exchange.
Working with direction from UABC he was able to find a previously unknown breeding population of highly endangered Totuaba near an undersea thermal vent at 150 fsw (he also discovered) that emits freshwater at 90 Centigrade. This is significant because this species required the fresh to light brackish water from the Colorado River flowing into the Sea of Cortez to breed and with the huge reduction of flow due the Hoover dam & overfishing they are nearing extinction. During the expeditions he found the Totuaba were being killed heavily by poachers whom also were killing dolphin, turtles and sea lions so Scott began a campaign to hunt & film them using SpecOps Combat Dive and Sniper techniques. He turned over the footage to officials and 11 people were convicted.
In addition Scott is a qualified Advanced Diving Medical Technician Instructor (1 of 10 in the USA), Commercial Diving Instructor, and Hyperbaric Medical Technician Instructor at the College Of Oceaneering. He is a U.S. Navy qualified Diving Supervisor, Modular Amphibious Egress Trainer Instructor and Aircrew Breathing Device Instructor for the USMC. He served in both the US Navy and Army, most recently as a MedEvac Helicopter Flight Instructor.
