An autonomous robotic seafloor crawler has set a new world record for the longest distance travelled and duration sustained under the sea, while collecting climate data for an entire year.
Benthic Rover, developed by the
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in the US, is the only untethered, entirely autonomous seafloor crawler currently.
The Rover operates at Station M, an area of flat seafloor 4,000 meters deep and about 220 kilometres from the California coastline.
One of the most significant findings from the last few years of the Rover's deployments involved several large pulses of marine snow that rapidly sank to the seafloor.
These pulses may be related to stronger along-shore winds that drive the upwelling of nutrients in coastal waters.
The nutrients spur the growth of phytoplankton and zooplankton, which increases the amount of marine snow that rains down to the seafloor.
Organisms in this abyssal realm rely upon marine snow as their primary source of food. The Benthic Rover records how much of the marine snow is consumed by the seafloor community.
Value of the Benthic Rover- The Rover detected several brief, two- to four-week events.
- This was when nearly an entire year's worth of chlorophyll-rich detritus landed on the seafloor.
- These events would have gone undetected without the Benthic Rover.
- Rover helped solve an important piece of Earth's carbon-cycle puzzle.
- It was critical in showing that a much larger percentage of carbon than previously expected can sink rapidly from the surface into deeper water.
- These periodic events can now be factored into global climate change models.
