- Oh, wow. - Whoa.
- Oh, what's that? - What?
Is that a shark? - Very cool.
- [Together] Oh!
- What is that? - That a shark?
- What's that? - Octopus.
- Oh, what the heck? - Oh it's a squid.
- Cool.
- What? - Oh wow.
- That is awesome.
- I'm so confused.
- [Nicole] As much as we love them,
not every moment on a dive is a "wow" moment.
Sometimes the ROV spend hours slogging through the mud.
Every highlight video you see is the result of months
of careful planning and hours spent exploring.
My name is Nicole Raineault,
the chief scientist of Ocean Exploration Trust.
I wanna take you through each element
of the typical ROV dive.
The hours we put into planning and preparation,
descending to the seafloor,
getting set up and moving from way point to way point,
as we observe areas never before seen.
We often start expeditions with just the general idea
of the topographic features nearby
and need to use the ship sonar
to make the detailed map needed to pick out priority areas
and plan ROV dives.
There's always more to explore than the time will allow.
So setting a detailed plan keeps the whole team focused
on the tasks at hand.
As an example, here's the total dive profile
for dive H1759.
The first of its kind exploration
of the Dragon's back Seamount,
where we spent over 24 hours on the sea floor.
A successful dive like this requires collaboration
and coordination between the whole team.
After launching the ROVs,
the start of any dive is what we called blue water.
This is when Hercules and the Argus descend
to the sea floor.
During this time, the team reviews the dive plan
so everyone in the control room and joining from shore,
knows the objectives.
We also see the amazing biodiversity in the mid-water,
across different depths zones in the ocean,
as the ROV's plummet to the sea floor.
That tiny yellow dot represents the actual ROV descent rate
into blue water.
It drops about one meter every three seconds.
It took us over two hours to reach the target depth
of 3,210 meters.
Once on the sea floor,
it's time for the team to get set up for exploration.
The navigators coordinate with scientists
to get Nautilus, Hercules, and Argus into the best position.
Once the video engineer calibrates the cameras,
we're ready to start exploring.
Every four hours,
the entire team, also called watches,
will trade out, so everyone in the control room is working
with sharp eyes and minds.
On the seafloor,
we catalog the deep sea's biology, geology,
and chemistry with the science team monitoring our video
and data feeds and recording observations in our data log.
This is some of the most rewarding work,
characterizing the sea floor through careful documentation.
We are often the first to view these parts of the ocean,
and may produce the only records in this area for years
or even decades to come.
Every observation is highlight worthy,
even if it doesn't make it to YouTube.
- Thanks. - Alright Steve.
- Okay.
Up slope towards 2.
- Great, way point 2 is target bearing 317 to Argus.
- [Nicole] Dives often become a steady pace of observation,
sampling and reorientation as we fly between way points,
but explorers always reserve the right to deviate
from a plan when something unexpected comes into view.
When video is not enough for scientists to evaluate an area,
we collect samples to gain more precise biological,
or geological information.
Before launch, we set up Hercules with samplers
based on the dive plan and what we think we might find.
Hercules can carry, 6 Niskin bottles for water collections,
8 jars for slurpable small samples,
push cores that capture sediment and the tiny creatures
that live in the mud
and 2 bio boxes divided into many compartments
to store larger organisms and rocks collected with the arm.
Samples are cataloged and archived at museums
and accessible for scientists to study for decades to come.
I think the whole team would happily spend days and days
on the sea floor checking out this ecosystem,
but all great dives eventually come to an end.
Sometimes we leave the sea floor
because we've completed all our dive goals
and the next dive site is calling us,
or maybe the weather on the surface is getting rough,
or sometimes we ascend because we just don't have
any more room on the ROV for samples.
But, at the end of a dive,
we always leave the sea floor feeling like
we've accomplished something while-worthy.
Every sample is valuable
and usually every meter covered
had never been explored before.
That is what makes every minute of the job worth it.
The whole team's work all goes towards better understanding
our ocean and planet,
one small discovery at a time.
We're always looking forward to our next expedition
and can't wait for you to join us.