Puma and Jaguar are autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) designed to overcome the technical challenges that now preclude under-ice operations in the Arctic Ocean. They will home in to an acoustic beacon and latch onto a wire suspended from a hole in the ice. Puma has sonars and sensors to search wide areas and detect temperature, chemical, or turbidity signals from hydrothermal vent plumes (the green lasers detect particulates in the water). Puma can track the plume back to its seafloor source, where Jaguar then will be deployed to hover with camera and lighting systems,high-resolution sonar, and a manipulator arm for close-up imaging, mapping, and sampling.
(Illustration by E. Paul Oberlander, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution )[back]
|
