Digital Extra: Mountains in the Sea

NOAA, courtesy of Mary Grady

From left, Jon Moore, Peter Auster and Mike McKee take their turns on watch in the control van.

Video: Watch live images of the expedition, scheduled to streamed from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. NOAA will also be broadcasting live programs for an hour a day from the control van, with teachers and scientists interacting live with students on shore

All night long, as the ROVs explore the ocean deeps, life in the control van runs on a rhythm of its own.

The space in the van, which is built from two tractor-trailer-type steel containers jammed side by side on the aft deck, is packed full with video screens, computer terminals, and control panels. A video operator crams into a tiny space between a steel wall and a bank of tape decks. The engineer, pilot, and navigator of the ROVs huddle together beneath a bank of plasma screens - the main cameras on Hercules and Argus each are shown on wide screens, and a half-dozen smaller screens show ancillary cameras and the winch on the aft deck.

The walls and ceilings are painted black, and the ambient light is kept low to better view the video screens. Talk not related to the dive is kept to a minimum.

At the ROV controls Friday morning, pilot Dave Wright sat in the engineer's seat, watching over the shoulder of trainee pilot Tom Orvosh, guiding him through each maneuver.

"The software is constantly being updated and tweaked, so it's a challenge to keep up with it," Wright told me later. "And this is our first trip with Hercules since last summer, so we all are just getting back up to speed." The complicated control panel is crowded with buttons and switches, and a multi-jointed joystick that controls the robot arm on Hercules.

Orvosh, an electrical engineer at University of Rhode Island's Bay Campus since 1981, has been working with the ROV project since it came to URI almost two years ago. He was a member of last summer's expedition to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean to explore ancient shipwrecks, and after this trip he'll stay on board the NOAA ship Ron Brown to travel with Bob Ballard to the Titanic.

When not at sea, he works with the Coastal Institute and the Jason Project at the Bay Campus, and also looks after Endeavor, URI's research vessel.

"I'm still learning to pilot the vehicle," he said of his training this week . "It's pretty intense."

The hardest part, he said, is the long descent, when there are few visual cues and Argus and Hercules have to be closely monitored and controlled. "Once we're on the bottom, you can see the terrain, and you can just drive around," he said. "That's easier."

Learning to move the robot arm is also challenging. "We have a bubble-cam that looks directly down on the sample, while the hi-def camera is looking straight-on, so that gives us the two references we need to move in three dimensions," he said.

It's tricky, though, and takes practice. "You have to be careful not to move the wrong way and hit yourself in the eye, and break the camera, " he said, laughing.

NOAA

ROV Hercules collects a Keratoisis bamboo coral on Bear Seamount. The bioluminescent blue-green light is produced by Keratoisis when it's agitated.

The arm and its scissor-like hand are used to pluck coral specimens from the seabottom and stow them in an insulated box.

Having internationally-known ocean explorer Ballard and his ROVs based at the Bay Campus has been great for the school, Orvosh said. He enjoys working with the school kids who take part in the Jason Project. "The ROVs are also great for our grad students, " he said. "Webb [Pinner] is with us on this trip, and he's doing a great job, and we have another student coming to the Titanic."

It takes an hour or more for Hercules to reach the seafloor. Once there, the vehicle can be driven along, poking at a speed of one knot or less. It flies above the bottom, sending up nonstop video of the seafloor.

During the dive, three scientists sit behind the ROV team in the dark, cold control van, at a similar bank of computers and screens. Speaking through headsets, both teams work together to make decisions about what to sample, where to go next, and how to get the work done. Space is tight in the confines of the van, but usually a few observers from the science team crowd in as well, unwilling to miss any of the show. The high-definition video, with brilliant lighting and sharp detail, is incredible to watch.

The sandy plains tend to be barren, so the scientists search for basalt rock surfaces where corals are likely to be found. The corals glow with bright orange, red, pink colors, the seabed is dotted with orange and red sea stars, occasional urchins in shades of purple and blue, deep- sea fish swim by, a hermit crab or shrimp scampers past.

Some of the corals are ancient, thick and gnarled at the base, bearing tall branches, probably hundreds of years old. Others spiral wildly up into the water column, thin and whiplike. Bamboo corals have round, pale trunks marked by dark nodes. Translucent creatures shaped like ancient urns, thick green fans of sponge, long-legged orange sea stars, create an extra-terrestrial landscape. At one site, the Argus camera looks down on Hercules, perched on the seafloor in front of three fan- shaped red corals, each one over four feet tall, still and illuminated by a small circle of light, surrounded by darkness. They are likely being seen for the very first time.

Once a specimen is chosen, it's carefully observed, measured and photographed. High-definition cameras zoom in to record minute details for later study. Hercules is nudged into position and sits tight on the seafloor, held in place by the downward force of its propulsion system, just like holding it down with a foot. The ROV manipulator arm reaches out and painstakingly works its way into the proper position to collect the sample, which is then placed in the biobox. The entire procedure can easily take the better part of an hour, yet the entire process absorbs the total attention of everyone in the control van.

Most of the dives so far have run for 10 or 12 hours, and the scientists and ROV crew rotate on four-hour watches. On Saturday, we finished our exploration of Manning Seamount and headed back toward Cape Cod. Sunday night we reached Kelvin Seamount, where Hercules will attempt its deepest dive yet, down to 4,000 meters.

Next, we'll visit Retriever, a pristine site that has never been dived on before.