Project Baseline presentation, Ft Pierce, Florida

The Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute hosts Global Underwater Explorers and their expedition ship, Pacific Provider for a public presentation and tour

A once pristine stream now hosts trash in its eddys. Our oceans, once teaming with diverse life, are now pocked with dead zones. The lakes we swam in as kids, clear down to the bottom, are now brown, murky and choked with algae and invasive plants.Gradual loss of knowledge about what should compose a healthy ecosystem leads each new generation to accept a different environmental standard; thus, our "baseline" shifts to accommodate an often changed, and, most relevant to our mission, sometimes degraded environmental "norm." This phenomenon is generally referred to as environmental generational amnesia and leaves people unable to recognize nearly imperceptible change as it occurs over time.So how do we document where we're at so that we can recognize further depletion of our most precious resource?Enter Project Baseline.Project Baseline is a grassroots, environmental conservation initiative that coordinates a global cast of volunteers who transform their everyday adventures in varied aquatic environments into data that is accessible and defensible and -- over time -- creates a baseline record of environmental quality. Observations that are cataloged in an accessible, defensible and consistent manner can be used over time to gain a deeper understanding of each place visited by everyday adventurers.At the outset of 2014, GUE teamed with Brownies Global Logistics to carry Project Baseline to new depths through the integration of divers and submersibles aboard the 165-foot Pacific Provider. This new relationship facilitates access to reefs and marine structures within the poorly documented range between 100 feet and 1000 feet.During 2014 the team will focus their efforts in Florida, the Bahamas, the Azores, Portugal, Sardinia, and Palermo. In May, GUE and Brownies will collaborate with Dr. Brian Lapointe and his team from the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute to revisit some of Florida’s reefs where Dr. Lapointe has previously documented harmful impacts from waste-water nutrients, tracing those impacts down the side of the continental shelf.The presentation will focus on this conservation effort to document deep reefs between Florida and the central Mediterranean Sea, and will present highlights from their past work, including tracing the source of Florida’s Wakulla Springs-- the longest underwater cave in North America--as well as tracking water clarity at California and Nevada’s Lake Tahoe and exploring deep caves in the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey.Global Underwater Explorers (GUE) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the exploration and conservation of the underwater world. Over the past 15 years they have trained and organized some of the world’s most capable and accomplished divers into a global network of teams that are regularly exploring all manner of underwater environments including deep reefs, caves, mountain lakes, and lost ship wrecks. In 2009, GUE established Project Baseline, focusing their global teams upon the task of documenting baseline environmental conditions around the world.