Underwater Vehicles
Girls Just Wanna Be Engineers
“Very few women go into engineering,” said Anna Michel, “because girls just don’t get the message that they could be…
Read MoreThe Hot Spot Below Yellowstone Park
WHOI scientist Rob Sohn brought an arsenal of deep-sea technology normally used to explore the seafloor to the bottom of Yellowstone Lake, where a team of researchers investigated the subsurface geothermal activity hidden from view in the national park.
Read MorePlankZooka & SUPR-REMUS
Much of marine life begins as microscopic larvae—so tiny, delicate, and scattered in hard-to-reach parts of ocean that scientists have…
Read MoreWhen the Hunter Became the Hunted
In waters off Mexico’s Guadalupe Island, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) engineers deployed the REMUS SharkCam, a torpedo-shaped robotic vehicle…
Read MoreThe Hunt for Undiscovered Drugs at the Bottom of the Sea
mentions HOV Alvin
Chasing Microbes: The Secret Superheroes of Our Planet
features video of and by HOV Alvin as well as R/V Atlantis
Why Did the El Faro Sink?
WHOI deep-sea vehicles and scientists played critical roles in searching the seafloor and locating the voyage data recorder of El Faro, the ship that sank in 2015 during Hurricane Joaquin, killing all 33 crew members.
Read MoreAfter Overhaul, Jason Is Stronger Than Ever
Jason, the workhorse remotely operated deep-sea vehicle, underwent a top-to-bottom overhaul that dramatically increased its capabilities.
Read MoreCommunicating Under Sea Ice
Researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution developed a new communication and navigation system that works over long distances under Arctic sea ice, allowing scientists to use autonomous underwater vehicles to explore the ice-covered Arctic Ocean.
Read MoreAncient Deep Sea Corals Need Protection From Modern Threats
mentions WHOI and HOV Alvin
BREAKING THE GLASS CEILING ON THE OCEAN FLOOR
quotes Dan Fornari and mentions Alvin sub
To Track a Sea Turtle
A WHOI engineer and biologist devise an autonomous system to track and film sea turtles beneath the surface, revealing a turtle’s eye view of the world.
Read MoreSCIENTISTS USE UNDERSEA DRONES TO HELP PREDICT HURRICANES
quotes Glen Gawarkiewicz and mentions WHOI
also picked up by other major news outlets: ABC New and CNBC among others
Launch and Recovery of AUV Sentry
TurtleCam 2016: A Turtle’s-eye-view
Highlights from recent TurtleCam missions include video of a leatherback turtle being tagged, views of tagged turtles from the REMUS…
Read MoreSharkCam Lost and Found
At the end of their December 2015 expedition to the shark-filled waters off Guadalupe Island, the SharkCam team lost contact…
Read MoreReturn of SharkCam: Into the Dark
SharkCam returned to Guadalupe Island, Mexico, to follow great white sharks deeper and into the night to give researchers never-before-seen…
Read MoreInside SharkCam
Learn how REMUS SharkCam is able to take you into the world of the great white shark to give you…
Read MoreSharkCam Tracks Great Whites into the Deep
On the first trip to study great white sharks in the wild off Guadalupe Island in 2013, the REMUS SharkCam team returned with an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) tattooed with bite marks and some of the most dramatic footage ever seen on Discovery Channel’s Shark Week: large great white sharks attacking the underwater robot, revealing previously unknown details about strategies sharks use to hunt and interact with their prey.
Read MoreA New Eye on Deep-Sea Fisheries
Imagine that officials charged with setting deer-hunting limits had to assess the herd’s abundance by flying over forests at night.…
Read MoreBeneath the Sea, the Galápagos Reveal More Marvels
The Galápagos Islands have offered biologists a natural laboratory ever since Charles Darwin’s day, but they’re also a frontier for…
Read More‘Popping rocks’ with robots
mentions WHOI and HOV Alvin
What It Feels Like at 10,000 Feet Under the Sea
video short featuring Bruce Strickrott
Robotic Vehicles Offer a New Tool in Study of Shark Behavior
The dramatic video footage of a great white shark attacking the “REMUS SharkCam” autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) brought some of the highest ratings to Discover Channel’s Shark Week 2014 and went viral on the Internet.
But while the footage was unprecedented, the scientific understanding enabled by the REMUS SharkCam is just as groundbreaking. The AUV was used during a science expedition in 2013 to better understand white shark behavior and represents the first successful efforts to autonomously track and image any animal in the marine environment. The research provides critical data to efforts to conserve these animals.
“We wanted to test the REMUS SharkCam technology to prove that is was a viable tool for observing marine animals – sharks in this case – and to collect substantial data about the animals’s behavior and habitat,” said WHOI engineer Amy Kukulya, one of REMUS SharkCam’s principal investigators.
The research results were recently published in the Journal of Fish Biology. The paper’s lead author is Greg Skomal, a biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. In addition to Kukulya, co-authors include biologist E. M. Hoyos-Padilla of Pelagios-Kakunjá, a Mexican marine conservation organization, and WHOI engineer and REMUS SharkCam software developer Roger Stokey.
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