There are two kind of people on the research ship Rachel Carson: Yes, I’m pretty sick and spend a lot of time on deck trying to see the undulating horizon, and there are scientists interested in the teleported vehicle dangling below us. Sitting in a joystick-on armrest, surrounded by glowing screens in another darkened room, a pilot guides an SUV-sized robot through a galaxy of life — small, dynamic fishes. Free-swimming crustaceans, jellyfish, and other gelatinous creatures swerve out of the way — stopping often to cross something off the species shopping list.
Scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the related Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, are methodically searching for specimens for a new exhibit, Into the deep, opening in the spring. It will be filled with extremely fragile, rare animals raised healthy in life-support systems that aquarists have taken years to perfect. Wyatt Patry, a senior aquarist, said of the species they were looking for: “Some of them we call ‘wet wipes’. “You just touch it with your finger and it starts ripping. Some animals are very delicate. “
We were off the coast of the California city of Moss Landing for about an hour, where the seafloor sloped down dramatically, opening up a large head of water below us. As soon as we parked our car past this, the deck came alive with workers, who used a crane to gently lower remote control car Ventana into the water. Dragging a tether that both keeps the robot out and gives the pilot real-time control, the machine immediately dives and disappears.
Now at 1,600 feet, the ROV begins collecting animals in two ways: through tubes and by sucking. To use these tubes, the pilot points one of the two mechanical arms toward the specimen. Each conduit is transparent, vertically oriented. When an animal enters the tube, the doors at either end close, trapping it inside.
In the video above, the robot is using a tube to collect an umbrella comb, Thalassocalyce inctans. The comb jelly is really gelatinous, so care here is noticeable, but it’s not actually jellyfish. They have tentacles, but instead of being attached to stinging cells, the appendages are stick to stalk bait.
This is a collection of another heather, with its remarkable tentacles and brightly colored spots, possibly in a new genus (classified above) that has not been formally described by researchers. “We knew absolutely nothing about it,” Patry said. “We don’t know what it eats; We don’t know who ate it. So it’s a real mystery. “
This railroad track comb is producing a light show. But the flicker is not what you think. Bioluminescence is everywhere in the abyss—For example, animals glow with symbiotic bacteria to attract prey or mates. Instead, the comb jelly’s color comes from tiny hair-like structures, called cilia, that repel the organism and only we can see it: The glow of the ROV is actually reflecting off the beating cilia. In the characteristic darkness of this part of the ocean, color would not be visible.
The video above shows the ROV’s second collection method, which uses a funnel with gentle suction for animals that can withstand a little more handling than delicate comb jellies. The pilot just needs to bring the funnel right to this golf tee and the suction will do the rest. After passing through the hopper, the animal is placed in a container in the robot’s belly.
This is a Christmas tree. Like comb jelly, siphonophores are gelatinous but are not jellyfish. They are hydrozoans, made up of units with different functions that link together to form a colony animal species. They will self-replicate many times, with some species stretching 100 feet long.
Once these specimens are secured, the pilot will bring the ROV to the surface with Rachel Carson, and the crew caught it with a crane. Patry and the other scientists rushed in and unloaded the collection tubes, running them to a small hut on the deck. They carefully transferred the specimens into plastic containers, then into the refrigerator.
Two hours later, when we were tied up at the pier, they quickly loaded the animals back into the car waiting to be transported to the aquarium, where the specimens would be much happier in the right life support systems.
You might be wondering: If human divers can flex when ascending from a depth of just a few hundred feet so quickly, is there any harm in bringing these animals up from 1,600 feet? Interestingly, they are fine. And when they arrived at the aquarium, their screens were matched to the water pressure, temperature and salinity that the animals were used to. Aquarists also pass water through special membranes that remove almost all of its oxygen, recreating the low-oxygen environment the creatures once called home.
It’s an environment that scientists are trying to understand, as the oceans change under the pressure of climate change. Just like terrestrial plants, photosynthetic algae called phytoplankton absorb carbon dioxide and are in turn eaten by animals, which release carbon-rich pellets to the seafloor. Carbon is thus removed from the atmosphere and locked up in the depths, but scientists don’t know How could that change? like the sea warm and acidified.
“Obviously, messing with that carbon sink could be a disaster,” says Patry. “One of the things we emphasized in the exhibition was deep–sea mining, has some pretty dire potential in many ways. “The mining equipment can agitate the fine sediments on the seafloor, creating large beams that rise up the water column. “It will completely wipe away anything that is viscous and sensitive to it.
This video shows the ROV in pristine waters – full of little white debris to be sure, but it’s critters busy turning that carbon into sinking pellets. They have no adapted way to survive the haze that enters their habitat. “As if killing the carbon transformer wasn’t bad enough, but you could potentially block light from some of the shallower areas,” says Patry. That makes photosynthetic algae less productive. “Now you’re starting to get confused with the ocean’s direct carbon sequestration, especially in high-yield areas.”
An expedition like this is both a way to collect specimens for the public to see and better understand these creatures – to find out “who lives in the worms, what are they doing in the worms, and what role they play.” role in the ecosystem,” says Patry. “Every opportunity you get like that counts for science.”
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