Photo: Texas A&M
As 13 trillion gallons of floodwater flowed into the Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Harvey, researchers from Texas A&M’s Geochemical and Environmental Research Group (GERG) needed an efficient way to monitor water quality and understand the impacts to the ecosystem. And they needed to move quickly.
Graphic: Scripps
When it comes to a tsunami, minutes matter. But historically, deep ocean seismic observations have been sparse due to the high cost, risk, and difficulty in collecting data. Scripps Institution of Oceanography had an ambitious goal to change that—so they created an innovative, unmanned observatory for real-time seismic detection.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) had a massive challenge: How to protect 840,000 square kilometers of remote marine habitat without incurring the expense and risk of manned missions. To help close the gap in maritime surveillance, the FCO enlisted the help of Liquid Robotics.
Today, most commercial fish stocks assessments are expensive and infrequent. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) worked with South Africa’s Department of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) to demonstrate a different approach—at a fraction of the cost of ships.
Photo: CSIR
The Southern Ocean accounts for 50% of all carbon dioxide absorbed by the ocean, 80% of the heat uptake, and supplies nutrients that support 75% of ocean productivity outside polar regions, yet researchers know little about its sensitivity to climate change. Researchers at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) are working to fix that.
Photo: CEFAS
Cefas needed a way to track and sample algal blooms in the right place at the right time. If they could confirm the presence of the Karenia sp. dinoflagellate within an algal bloom, then they could help improve the satellite algorithms used in the production of satellite products. Together we created a mobile, responsive solution for on-demand autonomous water sampling.
Photo: MBARI
The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) is a leader in applying technology to longstanding problems in ocean science. As their collection of ocean vehicles and robots grew, they faced a new challenge: how to improve coordination and communication between surface and subsea vehicles and access to data from these systems in real-time. One solution? A new hotspot payload for the Wave Glider.
Photo: Marie Roman
Over the course of two missions, Liquid Robotics worked with AIMS to demonstrate how a long-duration autonomous ocean vehicle can improve monitoring of the Great Barrier Reef and support monitoring operations such as in the waters of northwest Australia.
Photo: OTN
Snow crabs play an important role in Nova Scotia’s ecosystems. But traditional tagging methods for these mobile undersea animals relied on static receivers on the ocean floor, and weren’t always effective. The Ocean Tracking Network (OTN) needed a better way to track individually tagged crabs and understand their movements and patterns, even when they were not moving past a receiver line.
Photo: GEOMAR
Off the coast of Western Africa, you’ll find scientists from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel researching the impact of global climate change on marine ecosystems. One challenge they face? Finding a cost-effective, reliable way to collect data in remote, infrastructure-poor and under-sampled regions of the Atlantic.
Photo: GEOMAR
Scientists from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel have installed a network of seafloor sensors off the coast of northern Chile, where some of the most powerful earthquakes on the planet originate. Their goal? Measure seafloor motion with millimeter accuracy in order to better understand earthquake and tsunami risk.