ROV
Best Practices for Mitigating Negative Interactions Between Marine Mammals and MicroROVs
Today, we published our guidelines on the responsible operation of small recreational ROVs around marine mammals.
You can read the full paper here: Thaler and friends (2019) Bot Meets Whale: Best Practices for Mitigating Negative Interactions Between Marine Mammals and MicroROVs. DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2019.00506.
Reprinted below are the explicit guidelines proposed in the paper.
1. Education. Central to any mitigation strategy involving diverse stakeholders, ranging from professional to recreational, is user education. The following are critical to establishing a responsible user community: Ensuring all potential microROV users 1) not only understand the laws and regulations for wildlife viewing that apply to the jurisdiction in which they are operating, but understand why those regulations are in place; and, most importantly, 2) have internalized a stewardship ethic that motivates them to respect the rationale behind those regulations even when operating in regions where those regulations are not enforced. This is most effective when it occurs at point-of-sale or registration of the microROV. Thus, while the additional four guidelines relate to the user, this first one relates to the manufacturer. To most effectively convey the potential harm that microROVs could pose to marine mammals, the manufacturers are best positioned to educate their user base by providing informational material with each microROV sale.
Read MoreProtecting the Iron Snail, more then meets the eye, ROV-bot in disguise, saying farewell to a glacier, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: July 29, 2019.
Foghorn (A Call to Action!)
- For US Citizens: Call your representatives and demand Impeachment Hearings. Now. It is, in point of fact, the absolute least you can do.
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
- I can’t speak to the practicality of this beyond a few very niche applications, but it is still awesome. Aquanaut, an autonomous submarine that transforms into a humanoid robot.
- Scientists Just Discovered a 310-Mile Coral Reef Corridor in the Gulf of Mexico.
- The Trek to Bid Farewell to an Icelandic Glacier: A plaque will soon mark the site of Okjökull, one of Iceland’s dearly departed.
LarvaBots, turning the tide on captive dolphins, horror fish from the deep sea, ARA San Juan found, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: November 19, 2018.
Foghorn (A Call to Action!)
- Congratulations to Dr. Hal Holmes of Conservation X Labs for earning a Moore Foundation Inventor Fellowship for his DNA Barcode Project.
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
LarvalBot gently squirts the coral larvae onto damaged reef areas. Credit: QUT Media
Coral reefs lose their champion, which laptop is really the greenest, new sea slugs, and an octopuses garden in the sea. Monday Morning Salvage: November 5, 2018.
Foghorn (A Call to Action!)
- Help the Victims of Typhoon Yutu.
- Ruth Gates dedicated her life to saving the world’s reefs and training the next generation of reef scientists. The Fight for Corals Loses Its Great Champion.
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
The newest members of the nudibranch family. (H. iba comes in 2 color morphs.)
Photo: California Academy of Sciences
- Palau Becomes First Nation to Ban Sunscreens That Harm Corals.
- The tiny sponge that could help preserve our deep oceans.
A close-up photo of the sponge that is being studied. NHM.
I made a ridiculous Glowing Wall Mount for my OpenROV Trident!
Because OpenROV Trident is a work of art and should be displayed as such when not on deployment. This was my first big design project using the Glowforge and integrating LED strips
If you have a Trident, you can download the plans and bill of materials right here: OpenROV Trident Glowing Wall Mount.
More importantly, if you don’t have a Trident, allow me to direct you to the SEE Initiative. OpenROV and National Geographic are giving away 1000 free Tridents to scientists, educators, and explorers. Apply today and let’s have an adventure together!
Science as graphic novel, baby eels, anglerfish emoji, drone ocean rescue, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: January 22, 2018.
Fog Horn (A Call to Action)
- The US Government is shut down. This is not great news for science (at the moment, my project to train ROV technicians and deliver 5 – 10 observation-class underwater robots to the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands is on hold pending resolution). Call you congressperson and give them an earful. Call you senator and give them an earful.
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
- Women Writing About the Wild: 25 Essential Authors: A primer on who to start reading and who you’ve been overlooking for too long.
Nan Shepherd. (Wikimedia Commons)
- This paper: Managing marine socio-ecological systems: picturing the future, which, holy mola, is written in graphic novel format!
Managing marine socio-ecological systems: picturing the future.
Parasitic barnacles, a code of conduct for marine conservation, #BillMeetScienceTwitter, and more! Monday Morning Salvage: May 22, 2017.
Fog Horn (A Call to Action)
- 27 National Monuments are under review by the Department of the Interior. Our Nation Monuments are our National Treasures. Don’t let them be sold to the highest bidder! Submit formal public comments on the DOI Monument Review and make your voice heard.
Flotsam (what we’re obsessed with right now)
- This parasitic barnacle, Sacculina carcini, replacing the reproductive organs of a crab.
- Hat tip to Tommy Leung, who’s twitter feed is a gold mine of fantastic parasites and where to find them.
- #BillMeetScienceTwitter. What started as an inquiry into whether science celebrities really engage with practicing scientists on a regular basic morphed into the best way to find new scientists to follow on Twitter. I’m curating a massive list of all the self-identified Ocean Scientists that participated.
Jetsam (what we’re enjoying from around the web)
- Deep-sea mining is gearing up on the high seas, and international regulations is still lagging far behind technology: The Wild West of Deep-Sea Mining.
- oceanbites rolls out an excellent overview of the different kinds of robots used in conducting deep-sea research.
- Beyond drug lords and conservationists: Who is missing in the coverage of the vaquita’s demise? from the legendary team at Deep Sea News.
- Henderson Island is isolated and uninhabited, so why are all its beaches so completely covered in garbage? Spoilers: It’s because the planet is an interconnected global system with impacts felt far beyond the source of insult.
- Bone-eating snot flower worm will never not be my favorite common name. Tiny Zombie Worms Are the Beavers of the Deep.
- The history of the entire world, in one entertaining YouTube video (via Vox):
- Are Ships The Careless Giants Of The Sea? Yes, but they don’t have to be.
- Trump’s EPA Greenlights a Nasty Chemical. A Month Later, It Poisons a Bunch of Farmworkers.
- Trump country is flooding, and climate ideas are shifting.
- The Ocean as the New Frontier of Climate Action.
- The Antarctic Peninsula is 3 degrees warming than is used to be, and that means plants are growing and Antarctica is getting greener.
- The long history of ocean drilling and scientific discovery.
- A tiny anchovy could be a silver bullet for malnutrition in Peru—if only we would let it: The Fish that Smells like Money.
- I talk alot about e-waste and disposable electronics, which is why I’m excited to see modular, open-source smartphone projects finally start to mature. The ZeroPhone looks like on of the most promising additions to this space.
- Skeptic Magazine has a pseudoscience problems. Unfortunately, this time it’s the skeptics promoting some pretty eyebrow-raising junk science. I went a little deeper into this on Twitter.
Ocean Kickstarter of the Month: New Robot to Explore the Depths of Yellowstone Lake
We are engineers and explorers who plan to help Yellowstone scientists make what could be tomorrow’s greatest discoveries.
New Robot to Explore the Depths of Yellowstone Lake
The Global Foundation for Ocean Exploration is a non-profit engineering group that designs and builds robots to explore the world’s oceans and large lakes. They are trying to build Yogi, a small research ROV to explore the depths of Yellowstone Lake in Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone Lake is a fascinating water body, with hydrothermal vents similar to the deep-sea vents that my primary research focuses on.
I’ll let them explain why this project is so cool:
Why explore Yellowstone Lake?
Yellowstone started a proud tradition of protecting our planet’s most unique environments when it became the world’s first National Park more than a century ago. However, there is a part of Yellowstone that very few people have visited. An entire ecosystem that is hidden from us at the surface. A place that scientists are eager to study and may harbor unknown life; the depths of Yellowstone Lake.
We now know that the bottom of the Lake is far from barren, hosting species of crustaceans, sponges, and even small creatures that feed off of the Earth’s heat and chemistry rather than the Sun. ‘Thermophilic’ (or hot water-loving) microbes thrive in the relatively high-temperatures immediately surrounding active thermal features at the bottom of the Lake and scattered throughout Yellowstone Park. These creatures may be microscopic but they have the potential to profoundly influence the medical and biological sciences.
Onward to the Ocean Kickstarter Criteria! Read More
Keeping your robot invasions under control.
It’s been a big week for papers here at Southern Fried Science. This morning, Amy, myself, William (of Bomai Cruz fame), and Dominik and Erika of OpenROV published our guidelines on minimizing the potential for microROVs to act as invasive species vectors in Tropical Conservation Science. The abstract:
Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) present a potential risk for the transmission of invasive species. This is particularly the case for small, low-cost microROVs that can be easily transported among ecosystems and, if not properly cleaned and treated, may introduce novel species into new regions. Here we present a set of 5 best-practice guidelines to reduce the risk of marine invasive species introduction for microROV operators. These guidelines include: educating ROV users about the causes and potential harm of species invasion; visually inspecting ROVs prior to and at the conclusion of each dive; rinsing ROVs in sterile freshwater following each dive; washing ROVs in a mild bleach (or other sanitizing agent) solution before moving between discrete geographic regions or ecosystems; and minimizing transport between ecosystems. We also provide a checklist that microROV users can incorporate into their pre- and post-dive maintenance
routine.
Read the whole, open-access paper over at TCS!