Netting the oceans

There should be a global ocean observation network that can capture and monitor the Earth in motion. The sources of energy are the Sun, moon and the internal heat if we neglect giant impacts of meteoroids. It seems to that how these are delivered, distributed, transformed, and circulated in time and space need to be known to place hope in our future. Understanding our oceans and the Earth\´s interior employing multitude of sensors in the ocean constantly monitoring ongoing activities and being able to enhance observational capability by mobile sensor arrays will undoubtedly narrow the gap between varied scientific predictions. If the "earthquake prediction" is taken into consideration, any serious advance will require 3-D monitoring of stress buildup of the areas surrounding historical major earthquakes, which are mainly under the oceans. There are 3 levels of networks that should be in place to capture energy budget. Starting from sparse spacing, a global network to grasp at the global level, secondly a regional network to capture at plate-scale, then a local network at major fault level. For the third level, there should be deep borehole observatories to either reach the fault zone or be in the vicinity within the same rock environment. For this level, the vicinity of Japan, where the Pacific Plate and Philippine Sea Plate subduct is the most promising area for scientific return. Of course, this observational capability in 2020 should be linked with simulation capability to model complex Earth system at high resolution and laboratory experiments to determine physical and chemical properties of the in-situ rocks. Even so, this approach still lacks the harshest test of science; "time". Large earthquakes do not recur very often. We must try to overcome this by exchanging time with space. That is to take the approach to conceive the present Earth as a mosaic of pieces at different evolutionary stages, and then piece them together in the order of time.