The submersible dropped from the ocean’s surface faster than I had expected. With a loud “psssssss” the air escaped from the ballast tanks and the small craft suddenly tilted forward.

Within seconds, aquanaut Robert Carmichael and I were enveloped by a vibrant shade of blue, watching streaks of sunlight pierce the water’s surface. Soon a large manta ray appeared from the darkness below, gently gliding toward our small craft before vanishing into the distance.

The dive took place off a coral atoll called St. Joseph in the outer islands of Seychelles on a mission to explore the Indian Ocean. This body of water is poorly studied and few scientists have ever ventured deeper than the maximum scuba depth of 100 feet.

For more than a month researchers from Nekton, a British-led scientific research charity, have been using submersibles to dive deep below the waves to document the ocean’s health.

We arrived at St. Joseph Island in the early hours of the morning, and this was the first submersible dive at the new site. The sea bed suddenly appeared beneath our craft, a landscape no one had ever seen before.

I quickly scribbled down in the mission report the depth and time at which we sighted the bottom: “165 feet, 1144 UTC.” Carmichael, a veteran of the sea, relayed the information to the surface via an underwater telephone. Its loud static noise would be a constant of our dive.

We moved across a seabed of rock and sand and scattered soft coral until a great darkness opened ahead. Carmichael lowered us over the side of an underwater cliff. Our target depth was 400 feet.

Oceans cover over two-thirds of the Earth’s surface but remain, for the most part, unexplored.

Their role in regulating our climate and the threats they face are underestimated by many people, so scientific missions are crucial to take stock of the health of underwater ecosystems.

Able to operate down to 1,000 feet, these manned submersibles give scientists a unique understanding of changes in habitats as sunlight diminishes through the different layers of ocean. We glided with the current as six cameras mounted around the craft recorded its journey. In the months to come, researchers at Oxford will comb through the footage frame by frame, noting each species encountered.

Suddenly a drop of cold water landed on my arm, triggering alarm. Water is best kept on the outside of a submersible. Carmichael quickly put me at ease: The difference in temperature between the water around us and our submersible had created a layer of condensation on the hatch. We quickly soaked it up with towels.

It was curiosity that drew Carmichael to the ocean. “I just wanted to know what was down here,” he said. “It’s stunning in so many ways.”

This curiosity has attracted mankind for centuries. “The human mind is naturally drawn to grandiose notions of supernatural beings, and the sea is the ideal medium for them,” wrote Jules Verne, author of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” possibly the greatest submarine novel of all time, which opens with fears over a mysterious sea monster sinking ships and harvesting the lives of sailors.

Thirty years after reading the novel as a child, I’m sitting in a tiny glass bubble observing the underwater world like Captain Nemo on board the novel’s submarine, Nautilus. We are foreigners to this realm, objects of fascination for the reef shark that approaches us, as curious of us as we are of it.

Even in the 19th century, Verne feared the extinction of numerous species of marine life. The fears have been proven true. A WWF report found that marine vertebrate populations have declined by almost half since the 1970s.

Fishing is no longer the sole cause. Man-made pollution, global warming and the acidification of the oceans are new challenges.

As the oceans slowly soak up heat from the atmosphere, marine species will be affected in different ways. Some will adapt. Some will migrate to cooler waters. Others will disappear, leaving a gap in ecosystems that have existed for millennia.

“I came into the Indian Ocean hoping I’d see a giant Napoleon wrasse,” Carmichael said of one of the world’s largest reef fish. “Here we are, 35 days into the mission and I still haven’t seen one.”

Maybe we’re just not diving in the right places. Maybe the reality is bleaker.

As the surveys ended and the currents became too strong to fight, the surface vessel ordered our submersible to return to the surface.

With the lights off, we floated a few minutes in the semi-darkness before the sound of ballast tanks emptying marked our slow ascent. The dark blue water around us lightened.

“The oceans are all connected and important to the quality of life for all humans,” Carmichael said. “It’s worth protecting because the air we breathe and the food we eat and the oceans we swim in really do have a meaningful impact on everyone’s life.”

 
…

The submersible dropped from the ocean’s surface faster than I had expected. With a loud “psssssss” the air escaped from the ballast tanks and the small craft suddenly tilted forward.

Within seconds, aquanaut Robert Carmichael and I were enveloped by a vibrant shade of blue, watching streaks of sunlight pierce the water’s surface. Soon a large manta ray appeared from the darkness below, gently gliding toward our small craft before vanishing into the distance.

The dive took place off a coral atoll called St. Joseph in the outer islands of Seychelles on a mission to explore the Indian Ocean. This body of water is poorly studied and few scientists have ever ventured deeper than the maximum scuba depth of 100 feet.

For more than a month researchers from Nekton, a British-led scientific research charity, have been using submersibles to dive deep below the waves to document the ocean’s health.

We arrived at St. Joseph Island in the early hours of the morning, and this was the first submersible dive at the new site. The sea bed suddenly appeared beneath our craft, a landscape no one had ever seen before.

I quickly scribbled down in the mission report the depth and time at which we sighted the bottom: “165 feet, 1144 UTC.” Carmichael, a veteran of the sea, relayed the information to the surface via an underwater telephone. Its loud static noise would be a constant of our dive.

We moved across a seabed of rock and sand and scattered soft coral until a great darkness opened ahead. Carmichael lowered us over the side of an underwater cliff. Our target depth was 400 feet.

Oceans cover over two-thirds of the Earth’s surface but remain, for the most part, unexplored.

Their role in regulating our climate and the threats they face are underestimated by many people, so scientific missions are crucial to take stock of the health of underwater ecosystems.

Able to operate down to 1,000 feet, these manned submersibles give scientists a unique understanding of changes in habitats as sunlight diminishes through the different layers of ocean. We glided with the current as six cameras mounted around the craft recorded its journey. In the months to come, researchers at Oxford will comb through the footage frame by frame, noting each species encountered.

Suddenly a drop of cold water landed on my arm, triggering alarm. Water is best kept on the outside of a submersible. Carmichael quickly put me at ease: The difference in temperature between the water around us and our submersible had created a layer of condensation on the hatch. We quickly soaked it up with towels.

It was curiosity that drew Carmichael to the ocean. “I just wanted to know what was down here,” he said. “It’s stunning in so many ways.”

This curiosity has attracted mankind for centuries. “The human mind is naturally drawn to grandiose notions of supernatural beings, and the sea is the ideal medium for them,” wrote Jules Verne, author of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,” possibly the greatest submarine novel of all time, which opens with fears over a mysterious sea monster sinking ships and harvesting the lives of sailors.

Thirty years after reading the novel as a child, I’m sitting in a tiny glass bubble observing the underwater world like Captain Nemo on board the novel’s submarine, Nautilus. We are foreigners to this realm, objects of fascination for the reef shark that approaches us, as curious of us as we are of it.

Even in the 19th century, Verne feared the extinction of numerous species of marine life. The fears have been proven true. A WWF report found that marine vertebrate populations have declined by almost half since the 1970s.

Fishing is no longer the sole cause. Man-made pollution, global warming and the acidification of the oceans are new challenges.

As the oceans slowly soak up heat from the atmosphere, marine species will be affected in different ways. Some will adapt. Some will migrate to cooler waters. Others will disappear, leaving a gap in ecosystems that have existed for millennia.

“I came into the Indian Ocean hoping I’d see a giant Napoleon wrasse,” Carmichael said of one of the world’s largest reef fish. “Here we are, 35 days into the mission and I still haven’t seen one.”

Maybe we’re just not diving in the right places. Maybe the reality is bleaker.

As the surveys ended and the currents became too strong to fight, the surface vessel ordered our submersible to return to the surface.

With the lights off, we floated a few minutes in the semi-darkness before the sound of ballast tanks emptying marked our slow ascent. The dark blue water around us lightened.

“The oceans are all connected and important to the quality of life for all humans,” Carmichael said. “It’s worth protecting because the air we breathe and the food we eat and the oceans we swim in really do have a meaningful impact on everyone’s life.”

 
…

As recently as a half-century ago, young American students would spend many lessons writing curved loops and diagonal lines, as they learned how to write in cursive. Over the years, though, computer keyboards and voice to text programs have replaced pens and pencils, and made handwriting — especially cursive — less relevant. 

But it hasn’t disappeared. St. Luke Catholic School in McLean, Virginia, still teaches cursive. Several times a week, students work on their handwriting skills, clutching their pencils and pens as they practice forming neat loops and curls.

Teacher Grace O’Connor says eventually, all of them will have a style all their own. “The great thing about cursive is everyone has his own little spin to it, like, you know how to form your letters, but as you get older you, kind of, develop your own flow to your cursive writing, and it’s yours,” she says. “You can take ownership of it, which is really great.”

Cursive engages multiple senses

Cursive handwriting is emerging as a learning tool for students with dyslexia, a disorder that makes it difficult to read or interpret letters, words and other symbols.

Thirteen-year-old Joseph was diagnosed with dyslexia four years ago, when he was in third grade. “It was hard,” he recalls. “At first, I hadn’t known anything about it. So, I thought it was like the end of the world. So, I was, like, scared, but I had also known that eventually there would be a way for me to get past it.”

He’s “getting past it” with help from therapist Deborah Spear. She visits Joseph’s school several times a week for extra one-on-one practice sessions on cursive writing. 

Spear says practicing handwriting, especially cursive, helps these kids become better readers. The distinct curves and shapes are more likely to be retained in memory.

“We always teach the students that their hands will help them read,” she adds. “They’re very aware they learn through all of their senses. So, we always start with sky writing.”

For that, the students write a letter in the air with their fingers and name the letter at the exact same time they are writing it.

“We’re using the large shoulder muscle at that point,” Spear explains. “Then, we start with very large papers sometimes. So, we start to establish the gross motor movement before we let them hold the pencil, and they have to hold the pencil correctly. The other piece of it is that every handwriting letter is integrated into the letter’s name and that letter’s sound.”

In addition to handwriting, Spear finds that spelling is a useful learning tool. 

“So, when their spelling is smooth, they are integrating that sense in breaking a word down, then they’re able to read it back after they’ve been able to break it down,” she adds.

Why cursive?

Connecting the letters on paper helps students see each letter more distinctly, a benefit Spear says they don’t get from typing.

“Even if you’re able to touch type, just waggling the fingers is not the same as engaging the whole muscle of the arm in handwriting. When you wiggle your fingers, you’re not really differentiating between a ‘b’ and a ‘d’, for example, or an ‘m’ and an ‘n’. But when you’re handwriting, you’re making that distinction.”

Joseph says that’s exactly how practicing handwriting helped him read better and faster.

“When I do the handwriting motions, it’s like my hand remembers it,” he explains. “So, my brain starts remembering the letters and the words. Then, when I see these words, I remember the words when I’m reading. So, that helped a lot.”

Better writers, better students

Teacher Grace O’Connor says the extra handwriting practice helped the students gain confidence and perform better in class.

“I feel like they have a heightened sense of pride at their work from getting this extra help because it’s allowing them the opportunity to use strategies they’re learning one-on-one. So, they can be more confident in the classroom and working with the whole group on cursive writing.”

St. Luke staffer Kevin Cyrow says learning to write in cursive can help all students, not only dyslexic ones.

“A lot of memory issues are involved in it,” he says. “So, in order for a student to do well in a test or just remember things in general, it’s really important for them to write down. So I hope we’ll never lose it.”

Lessons for life, no matter how much they will use cursive handwriting in the years to come.
…

As recently as a half-century ago, young American students would spend many lessons writing curved loops and diagonal lines, as they learned how to write in cursive. Over the years, though, computer keyboards and voice to text programs have replaced pens and pencils, and made handwriting — especially cursive — less relevant. 

But it hasn’t disappeared. St. Luke Catholic School in McLean, Virginia, still teaches cursive. Several times a week, students work on their handwriting skills, clutching their pencils and pens as they practice forming neat loops and curls.

Teacher Grace O’Connor says eventually, all of them will have a style all their own. “The great thing about cursive is everyone has his own little spin to it, like, you know how to form your letters, but as you get older you, kind of, develop your own flow to your cursive writing, and it’s yours,” she says. “You can take ownership of it, which is really great.”

Cursive engages multiple senses

Cursive handwriting is emerging as a learning tool for students with dyslexia, a disorder that makes it difficult to read or interpret letters, words and other symbols.

Thirteen-year-old Joseph was diagnosed with dyslexia four years ago, when he was in third grade. “It was hard,” he recalls. “At first, I hadn’t known anything about it. So, I thought it was like the end of the world. So, I was, like, scared, but I had also known that eventually there would be a way for me to get past it.”

He’s “getting past it” with help from therapist Deborah Spear. She visits Joseph’s school several times a week for extra one-on-one practice sessions on cursive writing. 

Spear says practicing handwriting, especially cursive, helps these kids become better readers. The distinct curves and shapes are more likely to be retained in memory.

“We always teach the students that their hands will help them read,” she adds. “They’re very aware they learn through all of their senses. So, we always start with sky writing.”

For that, the students write a letter in the air with their fingers and name the letter at the exact same time they are writing it.

“We’re using the large shoulder muscle at that point,” Spear explains. “Then, we start with very large papers sometimes. So, we start to establish the gross motor movement before we let them hold the pencil, and they have to hold the pencil correctly. The other piece of it is that every handwriting letter is integrated into the letter’s name and that letter’s sound.”

In addition to handwriting, Spear finds that spelling is a useful learning tool. 

“So, when their spelling is smooth, they are integrating that sense in breaking a word down, then they’re able to read it back after they’ve been able to break it down,” she adds.

Why cursive?

Connecting the letters on paper helps students see each letter more distinctly, a benefit Spear says they don’t get from typing.

“Even if you’re able to touch type, just waggling the fingers is not the same as engaging the whole muscle of the arm in handwriting. When you wiggle your fingers, you’re not really differentiating between a ‘b’ and a ‘d’, for example, or an ‘m’ and an ‘n’. But when you’re handwriting, you’re making that distinction.”

Joseph says that’s exactly how practicing handwriting helped him read better and faster.

“When I do the handwriting motions, it’s like my hand remembers it,” he explains. “So, my brain starts remembering the letters and the words. Then, when I see these words, I remember the words when I’m reading. So, that helped a lot.”

Better writers, better students

Teacher Grace O’Connor says the extra handwriting practice helped the students gain confidence and perform better in class.

“I feel like they have a heightened sense of pride at their work from getting this extra help because it’s allowing them the opportunity to use strategies they’re learning one-on-one. So, they can be more confident in the classroom and working with the whole group on cursive writing.”

St. Luke staffer Kevin Cyrow says learning to write in cursive can help all students, not only dyslexic ones.

“A lot of memory issues are involved in it,” he says. “So, in order for a student to do well in a test or just remember things in general, it’s really important for them to write down. So I hope we’ll never lose it.”

Lessons for life, no matter how much they will use cursive handwriting in the years to come.
…

As recently as a half-century ago, young American students would spend many lessons writing curved loops and diagonal lines, as they learned how to write in cursive. Over the years, though, computer keyboards and voice to text programs have replaced pens and pencils, and made handwriting — especially cursive — less relevant. But, as Faiza Elmasry discovered, handwriting — especially cursive — can help dyslexic kids improve their reading. Faith Lapidus narrates her report.
…

Just 50 years ago, the Aral Sea, which straddles the nations of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, was the fourth largest lake in the world. But today it is mostly desert, and environmental groups are trying to save what is left. VOA’S Kevin Enochs reports.
…