Underwater Robots Capture Deep Sea Animals on Camera to Monitor the Seafloor

Researchers are getting a closer look at the deep ocean with the help of some new tools. Scientists have used advanced photographic tools in an unmanned Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) to make some major advances in estimating deep-sea ecosystem diversity.

The researchers used a camera on the Autosub6000 AUV to take a continuous stream of high resolution photographs of life on the seal floor. This actually revealed a tenfold increase in the precision of deep sea ecosystem diversity estimates.

The researchers analyzed the series of images to identify the types of creatures seen, calculate their relative abundances and estimate their size. This, in turn, gave an estimate of overall biomass that could be compared to earlier and later images to monitor how ecosystems change over time.

"This is an important step toward the automated imaging of the deep sea, which is essential for understanding the complexity of seafloor biodiversity and its future management," said Kirsty Morris, one of the researchers, in a news release.

The climate is continuing to change and because the seafloor is so removed and difficult to study, it's important to make steps to better understand it. The project could allow researchers to better monitor future changes.

"We are creating photographic maps of animals on the seafloor, which can scale up to the size of cities," said Henry Ruhl, coordinator of the project. "This allows us to understand links between ecology, ecological functioning, and human impact in a way that was not previously feasible."

The findings are published in the journal Limnol. Oceanogr. Methods.

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