| Shadowing fishermen's nets with a robot sub | |
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Credit: MATT JENKINS |
On a cold, clear day in November, the Donna Kathleen rode a gelid swell off the central California coast. On the aft deck of the 58-foot vessel, a small knot of people in hard hats ministered to what looked like a glorified toboggan with a couple of thrusters bolted on.
The fridge-sized, black-and-seafoam-green machine, dubbed the Beagle, was a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV — essentially, a boxy, unmanned robot submarine. As a veteran ROV designer named Dirk Rosen fiddled with one of the video cameras mounted on it, he waxed decidedly un-lyrical about the machine’s inherent hydrodynamic flair |
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“It’s a total brick," said Rosen. "It’s basically a pickup truck carrying a whole bunch of sensors.”
As Rosen paid out a thick umbilical cord attached to the Beagle, a crane lifted the machine over the deck railing and gently set it into the water, where it bobbed on the swell. Then the ROV burst to life. Like a dog sniffing out a scent, the Beagle zipped 20 feet through the water and then burbled into the dark depths below.
Rosen turned and ducked through a hatchway into the Box, a darkened, van-sized container lashed to the deck of the boat. Inside, James Lindholm, a professor from California State University Monterey Bay, sat crammed into a seat with what looked like a video-game controller in his hand. A miniature disco ball dangled over his left shoulder, and as his iPod shuffled through its play list, the groove of the Bee Gees’ “Night Fever” suddenly began bumping over the soft hum of electronics cooling fans. |
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