Search Results for
Scott Reef may be extremely remote—some 400 kilometers north from Broome in the Timor Sea, but now anyone can view the reef and sea floor on their phone, iPad or computer. On Schmidt Ocean Institute’s March-April research cruise, the team, led by Dr. Oscar Pizarro from the University of Sydney’s Australian Centre for Field Robotics, … Continued
Yesterday, research vessel Falkor arrived in Broome, North Western Australia under clear skies and calm seas. Despite the nice weather, mobilizing for this cruise was anything but easy. When dealing with king tides of up to 10 meters, docking a 272 ft. vessel and loading equipment can be challenging. The science team and crew had … Continued
Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor to host coordinated robotics expedition studying remote coral reefs in the Timor Sea In a first of its kind study, an international research team onboard Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor will conduct a data gathering expedition using coordinated groups of underwater robotics. The team, led by Dr. Oscar Pizarro … Continued
Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) like Sirius and gliders are powerful oceanographic tools that can help scientists obtain seafloor images and other types of data. Currently on the Coordinated Robotics cruise, Dr. Oscar Pizarro and his team are doing just that. A picture is worth a thousand data points Underwater imagery is a collaborative process used for … Continued
A recent blog explained new efforts at Schmidt Ocean Institute to make the data collected aboard R/V Falkor as easily and openly accessible as possible. One of those efforts was the development of a new “data dashboard” Falkor status page, which went live this week. This is a step forward for Schmidt Ocean Institute in … Continued
After 12 days at sea, we are nearing the end of the first deep exploration of Perth Canyon. Although it has long been known that a submarine canyon exists at our doorstep, this was the first detailed exploration using state-of-the-art mapping systems and ROV technology, which unveiled the magnificence of an ancient canyon the size … Continued
One of the main goals of this expedition was to explore the diversity of deep sea corals in Perth Canyon and to collect a variety of specimens for later geochemical analysis in the laboratory. The skeletons of deep sea corals are of high interest to scientists because their geochemical composition provides a record of how … Continued
Submarine canyons are dramatic topographic features that connect shallow continental shelves to deep ocean basins and create marine hotspots due to their unusual characteristics. They are highly productive zones that support an astonishing diversity of marine life within their depths. Perth Canyon is no exception, and has long been known to attract large aggregations of … Continued
Finding “love”, or a member of the same species to mate with, can be extremely difficult in the vast darkness of the deep sea. Many invertebrates reproduce in the same way as their shallower water counterparts, by releasing large amounts of eggs and sperm into the water column, while others have evolved more unconventional strategies. … Continued
