by Matthew Cobb
If you click here you will be taken to the live feed of the NOAA Ocean Explorer Okeanos exploration of the deep sea off Hawaii. This is conducted by a remote-operated vehicle, with a video camera and lights, with the operators on the ship way above. There are geologists and marine biologists on line to discuss the things they can see. This is really like being on Mars, except there are animals! Right now they are 1.4 km down – they just came across a 1 metre-long eel!
Yesterday they were 4.3 km down and came across this unknown octopus that got everyone very excited! Really, click and watch – this is fantastically exciting stuff.
Amazing! Live! #Okeanos pic.twitter.com/iQtmCE7HCM
— Professor Sean (@scxq28) February 27, 2016
Very cool.
A shark!
/@
A shark attack:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~\o/~~~~~~~~/|~~~~~~~~
Thanks! It’s amazing to be along for the ride.
Thanks! Amazing how clear the video has become, I didn’t expect that.
Biological sampling! It’s like Yule all over again.
I wonder how that seastar got up that skinny stalk to reach the coral polyps.
Fascinating.
Soob
These creatures live in perpetual darkness so I wonder what effect the bright lights have on them?
A lot of deep-sea creatures are bioluminescent to some degree, so a lot of them – both predators and prey – retain visual function.
The organisms that are visible in the lights are ones that aren’t scared off by the lights.
I would expect that someone, somewhere, does ROV exploration with IR cameras and lights, and may well get to see a different community.
Very cool, the clarity is amazing.