Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) and Ocean Research and Conservation Association (ORCA) deploy world's first underwater webcam for scientific research.
The first deep-sea webcam was successfully installed on the floor of California’s Monterey Bay earlier this year. The Eye-in-the-Sea camera will allow marine researchers and scientists to unobtrusively observe organisms in the deep ocean, some for the first time.
The remote monitoring system will take streaming video and various scientific readings 24 hours a day, sending them via the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s new undersea data network, the Monterey Accelerated Research System (MARS).
At a time when everywhere scientists look in the oceans, they observe mounting challenges and problems; the Eye-in-the-Sea and MARS combo will provide scientists with much needed data on how changes in shallower waters are changing the composition of the seafloor.
Previous missions captured only one or two creature snapshots per day. The Eye-in-the-Sea will stay at the MARS site for three to six months at a time, with cameras running 24 hours a day. The whole time, the MARS data link will bring the images to shore as they are taken, allowing scientists to watch, trigger experiments with the electronic jellyfish, or grab still photographs with the color camera as soon as they see something extraordinary.
Observations will help solve the mystery of bioluminescence, the phenomenon of living creatures making their own light. Although researchers know the basic chemistry, experts still do not understand precisely why animals light up or even how many types of glowing creatures there are down in the relatively unexplored depths.