The deep sea is home to a vast wealth of hidden wonders. From spectacular creatures
adrift in the endless dark, to the otherworldly ecosystems that bloom out of the sea floor.
Each year, countless new discoveries are made
that bring us a few steps closer to understanding this remarkable environment.
But more important than any amount of footage is the innovation and
technology behind the lens that makes these discoveries possible.
For over a century, scientists had very limited options when it came to sampling
the creatures of the deep. Historically, a trawl net had to be towed along by a ship
and hauled up creatures onto the deck to be collected.
But with many open ocean dwellers being small, fragile and often gelatinous,
the specimens this yielded tended to be damaged or incomplete.
The mysterious nature of the depths and its curious creatures endured.
In the late 20th Century, the development of Remotely Operated Vehicles, or ROVs, finally
allowed us to send cameras and samplers into their world and observe them as they appear naturally.
The cameras became our eyes, and the instruments,
our arms, allowing our understanding of the oceans to advance more than ever before.
Meet ROV SuBastian.
Built in 2015, this Remote Operated Vehicle is owned and operated by
the Schmidt Ocean Institute, a non-profit oceanographic research
foundation which has been pioneering deep-sea research and technology since 2009.
Tethered to their ship the RV Falkor, SuBastian can reach depths of up to 4,500m,
where it opens a window into another world.
As it begins to descend, the light of the sun
fades to black, and the depths are illuminated only by the glow of SuBastian’s lights.
Its destination is a system of hydrothermal vents called the Auka Vent Field,
located in the Pescadero Basin in the tectonically active Gulf of California.
The vent fields of the Pescadero Basin appear distinct from any other known vent systems.
One field exhibits an underwater cavern where hot fluid pools at the ceiling
and form a reflective surface like an upside-down lake.
The biodiverse life of these vents, captured by SuBastian’s cameras, is also unique.
The lack of sunlight means that animals here must rely on microbes generating energy
through chemosynthesis, converting dissolved minerals into nutrients.
Many of them form symbiotic associations with the microbes,
like these Oasisia tube worms, which are unusually common in this region.
Outfitted with a suite of sensors and an array of advanced equipment,
ROV SuBastian is well dressed for the occasion. As it comes across
rocks or sessile organisms on the sea-floor, manipulator arms are used to grab the specimen
and stow it securely in crates mounted at the front of the vehicle.
A suction sampler can be deployed to collect the sprawling bacterial matts
that surround these towering vents of superheated water.
But there is one region of the deep sea where sampling remains a challenge.
Encompassing the space between the sunlit surface waters and the dark sea floor far below,
the midwater is home to Earth’s largest ecosystem and a community of often gelatinous animals that
likely outnumber all other life on the planet. But it’s also one of the least explored environments.
When it comes to exploring the ocean’s midwater, ROVs have had limited success in collecting the
delicate specimens. As a result, we’re still missing a wealth of information on the diet,
life cycles and ecological significance of these organisms. But this might be about to change.
For their 2021 ‘Designing the Future 2’ mission,
Schmidt Ocean Institute shifted their focus to the midwater.
With three revolutionary new systems on board that were first tested in 2019, the goal was to make
midwater sampling more efficient, and crucially, less intrusive for the animals involved.
[Kakani]
The region of the ocean that we're really interested in studying is the
midwaters, the area that connects the sea surface to the sea floor.
There aren't very many ways in which you can access and study that system,
so fortunately for us the research vessel Falkor, along with ROV Subastian,
has the capability of doing midwater studies.
[Brennan] It's really hard to approach animals in the midwater and get really good images
and then sample them. It's almost like a zero gravity environment, you're in a 3D environment,
the animal itself is moving, the ROV is moving. There are so many dynamics at play.
So to actually get around one of those animals and get a good sample of it is a real challenge.
It's something that, for decades, scientists have come up with a number of methods to approach them.
[Leo]
These projects, developed by outside entities and collaborators, which would allow midwater
species to be studied entirely in their natural environment, are being tested on ROV Subastian.
[Brennan] I think what I'm most excited about is the idea that we have everything on the vehicle at
once, which is a really rare moment. We have three different systems on here. Two really advanced
imaging systems, and this encapsulation sampling system that goes into it. Usually those would go
one at a time because they're quite advanced and complex in their own rights, but we've combined
them now onto the vehicle at once and when you stand back and look at what we're gathering,
the amount of information that we're gathering in that short time period, it's quite staggering.
One of these new systems is called Deep Particle Image Velocimeter (DeepPIV),
which is able to capture the motion of suspended particles
using a continuous laser sheet and a high resolution camera.
What this means for deep sea sampling, is that the 3D structures of midwater organisms
can be rendered without having to remove it from the environment.
This allows scientists to collect data that’s truly representative of how these gelatinous,
fragile organisms move through their environment, like this Solmissus jellyfish.
[Kakani] Not only did our team bring out DeepPIV, we also brought out a new
imaging system that can do 3D volumetric imaging of animals swimming and feeding.
EyeRIS is a very different approach to volumetric imaging or 3D imaging.
Where DeepPIV requires a scan to recreate a 3-dimensional object,
EyeRIS doesn't. So EyeRIS, in a single frame, will capture the 3D surface of a moving object.
So if you have a squid that might be beating its fins, or jellyfish that
might be contracting is bell, we can capture all of those changes at 60 frames per second.
[Brennan] Then after we do all that wonderful imaging and gather a lot of data about the animal,
we're able to encapsulate it in this device we call the Rotary Actuated Dodecahedron, which. is
a really interesting exercise in origami robotics. It surrounds the animal, and then inside of it we
can cleave off pieces of tissue and preserve it in-situ in the environment. With that type of
sample, we're able to gather a lot of genetic data about the animal as well.
Everything else I've seen before this involves some sort of suction sampler or trying to get
things into a jar, whereas the RAD2 is really this idea I think many midwater biologists have
had where 'wouldn't it be great if I could just reach out and grab it?' We actually can do that.
[Leo]
One of the most exciting implications of these new
technologies is the possibility of collecting digital holotypes.
Traditionally, aa holotype is the physical 'type' specimen of a species that's new to science.
Its morphology and DNA are used as a point of reference to compare with already known species
and help describe the new.
So what happens when you find a new species but you can't collect a good holotype specimen?
Well, in deep-sea research, this is a common problem.
ROV cameras come across animals that are new to science
in the midwater more than anywhere else on Earth.
So with DeepPIV's 3D scan system, and the tissue sampling technology of RAD2,
the data needed to describe delicate midwater organisms
can be obtained entirely in-situ without needing to remove the specimen from the environment.
There's still a long way to go before the elusive nature of the midwater ecosystem
and its delicate inhabitants can be fully understood,
but with governments and mining companies beginning to show interest in the deep sea
for its valuable resources, it's more important than ever before that we comprehend just how
delicate the midwater is, and the impacts our actions might have in this environment.
[Peter] I'm really excited at the prospect that Schmidt Ocean Institute
can continue to, and maybe even to a greater degree, play a role in pushing
the envelope on the technologies that we need to better understand our deep ocean.
Unlike space, we can't just look into this deep ocean and see the sea-floor, so we have to come
up with new and exciting ways to have eyes and ears in the deep sea, to really allow us to
figure out what's going on down there and what's happening that helps keep our planet running.
[Leo]
To find out more about Schmidt Ocean Institute and follow along their missions as they explore
the depths and test new technology, head over to their YouTube channel, or follow the links to
their website to read some fascinating cruise logs and explore their interactive content.