The data could also be used to help guide where drilling should be allowed, in particular areas or at particular
times of the year.
"It is interesting to see the defense people, the oil people and the
academic people working together," said Alan Chave, a senior scientist
at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Mass.
The biggest challenge, said Chave, is the reliability of such an
underwater network, particularly in the corrosive, freezing waters of
the Arctic ocean.
"You have to build it as fail-safe as possible," he said, and if
something breaks down, "You have to have a strategy for picking things
up and fixing them."
Godoe has estimated that a prototype system would cost about 3 million
Euros (about $4 million) and that a full-blown network, perhaps tens of millions of
Euros. It may sound like a lot, but a just one support vessel for the
oil industry costs a company more than 50,000 Euros ($66,065) per day.
"With the amount of money involved in the oil industry nowadays, the
cost of such a system would be peanuts," said Godoe.
