Totals may not add due to rounding. Support is also provided for the facilities required to gain access to the ocean, including research vessels, manned deep diving submersibles and a wide range of technologically advanced observational instrumentation. Oceanography is a highly interdisciplinary research endeavor that is fundamental to the understanding of the Earth's climate, to resource and hazard assessment, and to the health of the ocean's complex and diverse ecological systems. NSF provides over 70 percent of federally supported basic research in the ocean sciences performed in colleges and universities.
Recent discoveries demonstrate that the ocean has much yet to reveal.
This discovery will have a major impact on our view of how the oceans function ecologically. The Lost City contains the largest hydrothermal chimneys of their kind ever observed, reaching 180 feet above the seafloor. The knowledge resulting from discoveries such as these, and subsequent research, will greatly advance our understanding of how the ocean functions. Research problems increasingly require focused, collaborative, and coordinated programs of observation and interpretation that are often interdisciplinary. The OCE Subactivity was organizationally restructured in November, 2000.