Underwater Vehicles

The deep ocean is our planet's last frontier. Exploration of vast areas of seafloor by human occupied vehicles (HOV), remotely operated vehicles (ROV), and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV) over the coming decades will facilitate profound new discoveries. These vehicles are also vital to the health of ocean observatories where they will serve as workhorses for high-resolution seafloor mapping, cable route planning, and cable and instrument installation and maintenance. Installation of the Neptune cabled seafloor observatory will also require intense imaging and return of rock, fluid, and biological samples from the focused seafloor observatory sites. Both academic and industrial deep submergence assets will be required. Currently, there are four US and Canadian ROV’s that routinely conduct deep-water science operations:

JASON II operated by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution as part of the National Deep Submergence Facility

Ventana and Tiburon operated by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and

ROPOS operated by the Canadian Scientific Submersible Facility

The Autonomous Benthic Explorer (ABE) has been used extensively by the academic community to explore for new hydrothermal vents and to map the seafloor at high resolution the vehicle Sentry is the next generation vehicle now coming on line. The AUV Durado is also a mapping system. As part of the MARS program (a testbed for NEPTUNE), a new underwater docking system is being developed that provides an underwater connection for the AUV to re-power its batteries and communicate to shore, which allows the vehicle to download data, and upload and initiate new missions. These capabilities may allow rapid response to underwater eruptions, imaging of the eruptions and critical early sampling of fluids and biological material associated with these events.