Feedback from viewers suggested these broadcasts cre-
ated a high level of emotional engagement.
In September, the NOAA Office of National Marine
Sanctuaries and WHOI sponsored a cruise aboard
R/V Connecticut to the Stellwagen Bank National Marine
Sanctuary where live broadcasts were conducted while
an ROV explored the wreck of the wooden-hulled paddle-
wheel steamship Portland (Figure 2). Prior to the cruise,
the ISC production team worked closely with the partners
to guide the pre-production process of crafting scripts,
gathering footage, and scheduling the broadcast days. The
ISC established connection tests with each venue, oriented
the guest(s) to the technology, and provided an overview
of expectations during the program in order to create a
smooth process for both the venues and the vessel. The ISC
connected the program directly to schools, YouTube, and
Facebook Live, with an estimated reach of 2,000 partici-
pants and 10,000 online viewers.
Throughout the year, the ISC tested a live interaction
program that was based ashore rather than aboard NOAA
Ship Okeanos Explorer. In collaboration with NOAA’s Office
of Ocean Exploration and Research engagement team,
and using ROV Deep Discoverer footage, the ISC connected
with classrooms, museum summer camps, and the Ocean
Discovery Institute in San Diego via Skype (Figure 3).
Working with the Ocean Exploration Trust and the
E/V Nautilus team, the ISC assists with providing most pre-
2018 ROV Hercules video through a request system that
often takes a long time to fill. New to the 2019 field season,
a YouTube Channel (Nautilus Live Dive Recordings) was cre-
ated to host the one-hour full dive recordings as captured
through the live satellite link by ISC servers. The videos were
then contributed to Lamont-Doherty’s Ocean Video Lab, an
underwater video portal (http://www.oceanvideolab.org/)
designed both to make underwater video more accessible
and to develop a mechanism to automate video anno-
tations. Through the portal, citizen scientists can log in
FIGURE 2. NOAA Education Specialist Hannah MacDonald hosting
a live classroom connection from ISC Mission Control with National
Geographic’s Exploring by the Seat of Your Pants during the NOAA
Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary project.
FIGURE 3. ISC Intern Ben Woods answers questions from
students during a live classroom connection hosted by
NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research Regional
Program Manager Catalina Martinez.
FIGURE 4. ISC Media & Production Specialist Alex DeCiccio
directs the Arctic broadcasts from Production Control with
assistance from Daniele Myers.
and add simple annotations (e.g., identifying a deep-sea
coral), while registered scientific users can add manual
annotations (e.g., the coral species name). Navigation data
and shipboard annotations can also be ingested into the
system, which can be downloaded by any user.
In late October 2019, the final MTU project sup-
ported Antarctic Broadcasts: Broader Impacts Through
Telepresence (ABBIT) during an expedition aboard
R/V Laurence M. Gould to Palmer Station on the Antarctic
Peninsula that was funded by the National Science
Foundation. This proof-of-concept project utilized the
ship’s telecommunications system to conduct live inter-
actions from the Southern Ocean (Figure 4). The ISC team
brought a variety of video encoding equipment aboard
the vessel to run a series of tests on the limited bandwidth
available in order to determine which devices, settings,
bandwidth protocols, frame rates, and video quality pro-
vided the most robust experience so that future vessels
operating in remote regions could connect with the high-
est quality end product. This project not only demonstrated
the capabilities of the ship and the ISC to host broadcasts
from an isolated area of the planet but also demonstrated
the increasing need for both the science community and
the general public to better understand our ocean and the
federally funded work that occurs at remote field facilities.