Somewhere between 700,000 and one million different species live in the ocean; scientists have only discovered and named about a third of these. The ocean is vast and remains largely undiscovered. With advancing technology, we can go deeper and deeper into the ocean, yet there are still areas that we cannot access. Knowing more about the ocean is vital. It controls our weather, we rely heavily on it for food, and it provides a large amount of energy. Ocean exploration is far from finished.

Ocean exploration is about finding new creatures. It is about trying to see the whole body of water and getting a complete understanding of such a vital part of what keeps us alive. Exploring the ocean will also help us come up with a better understanding of marine life. Once we know more about the ocean, we can know more about the animals that live there and how they work together. As more of the ocean is available to us, the more species we can identify and study. These new animals can become a new food source or even help us to understand the habits of other already identified species. New plant life could be used for medical advances. There is so much we don’t know about the ocean and that we continue to find everyday.

By exploring more of the ocean, we can also understand how the environment changes. Being able to explore the oceans, we can see how the Earth’s crust is moving the environmental change that may happen in the future. With this knowledge, we could help to prevent disasters in the deep sea. The oceans can help to prevent some climate change-- we do not know how much or how effective this is. One of the major things we need to do to continue this process is to keep the oceans clean.

The NOAA is the only federal organization that is dedicated to exploring the rest of the ocean. One of their main goals is to close gaps in what we do know and what we don’t know. They also invest in technologies that can explore deeper than any human can. By exploring the ocean, they can change and update existing policies and create new ones.

We know almost nothing about the ocean. There is so much more animal and plant life that we do not know about. Not to mention that there is a ton of space and caves that have yet to be discovered. Funding ocean exploration is vital in understanding what gives us most of our life.