Scientists have crossed an important threshold in an international effort to deploy a global network of robotic instruments to monitor and investigate important changes in the world?s oceans.

The world's last unexplored frontier - the ocean - could soon be home to swarms of tiny submarines, moving together like schools of fish as they probe the depths.

The genetic blueprints for four strains of phytoplankton -- some of the world's smallest photosynthetic organisms -- have been unraveled, a development that could improve climate modeling and the creation of new energy sources.

An interview with Craig J. Venter on his plans to sequence the genomes of the ocean with the goal of engineering "a new species of microorganism from scratch ? to improve metabolic function by orders of magnitude so that we can make biological CO? scrubbers for power plants."

As astronauts continue construction on the world's largest outpost in space, some hope to begin building a research base at the other end of our world ? deep under the ocean. The proposed Ocean Atmosphere Seafloor Integration Study, or OASIS, would offer aquanauts (the underwater version of astronauts) a permanent perch on the continental shelf about 600 feet below the ocean surface.

The University of Southern California School of Engineering has received $1.5 million research grant from the National Science Foundation to create swarms of microscopic robots to monitor potentially dangerous microorganisms in the ocean. "With increasing urban runoff, sewage spills and blooms of harmful algae off heavily populated coastal areas, it is very important to be able to sense, and then identify, particular ocean microorganisms quickly," said Ari Requicha, a USC professor of computer science and the project's principal investigator. "The quicker we learn that a pathogen is present in the water, the sooner we can warn people and begin action to correct the situation."

The U.S. has initiated research into a near-limitless energy source that has the potential of ending America?s dependency on foreign fuels but could, if improperly used, cause devastating damage to the environment.

Scientists believe there is a vast and as yet untapped source of energy locked in mud at the bottom of the ocean. They say frozen natural gas produced by deep sea bacteria has built up over thousands of years to provide the huge energy reserve.