IRVINE : A Journey to the Bottom of the Sea

Although they were seated comfortably in an Irvine auditorium, a group of students found themselves 7,000 feet below the surface of the ocean Monday, exploring a remote world where creatures survive without sunlight.

Here, far below the surface of the Sea of Cortez between the shores of Baja California Sur and Mexico, boiling fluids bubble from cracks in the ocean floor and tube worms somehow manage to survive in the crevices surrounding the hydrothermal vents.

As deep-sea explorers with an underwater robotic submarine named Jason to explore the vents, students were right there, seeing everything on three huge video screens as it happened.

Later in the broadcast, students were taken live via satellite to San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja, where Jason Project researchers are studying gray whales.

“This is a lot better than using a text book,” said 12-year-old Billy Chandos, a sixth-grader at Trabuco Elementary School in Trabuco Canyon. “You can see what the scientists see and what they’re discovering.”

Through advanced satellite technology known as telepresence, about 240 students and teachers were able to explore the last frontier on earth Monday morning during the first 60-minute broadcast involving the Jason Project, a two-week scientific expedition.

As the expedition continues, about 10,000 Southern California students will participate in a series of live broadcasts, sponsored by the Orange County Marine Institute in Dana Point. The broadcasts are being held for the second year in a row at the Beckman Center of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering, next to the UC Irvine campus.

“The first goal is to interest as many kids in science as possible,” said Stanley L. Cummings, executive director of the Marine Institute.

For the students involved in the broadcast, it didn’t take much to convince them about how interesting science can be, especially since they were able to watch it live on television.

“It makes it a lot more interesting,” said Ryan Richards, a sixth-grader at Serrano Elementary School in Villa Park.

“You could see all the tube worms, all the life forms we’ve never seen before,” said Colin Godby, a fourth-grader at Trabuco.

Students from St. Justin Martyr School in Anaheim also were also on hand for the first broadcast. All the students have recently been preparing for the broadcast through special lessons developed by the National Science Teachers Assn.

Founded by adventurer-explorer Robert Ballard more than three years ago, the Jason Project and its broadcasts to theaters and classrooms nationwide have given students an opportunity to explore the previously unknown undersea world.

“It’s pretty exciting what we’re doing down here,” Ballard said, speaking to the students from the vessel Laney Chouest in the Sea of Cortez.

“This is the most complicated thing I’ve ever done,” Ballard said. “I don’t know if we can top this, but we’ll try in the future.”