In case you missed it. The first ever deep-sea web cam is up and running. I said the FIRST EVER DEEP-SEA WEB CAM. I don’t even need to go to sea now! I can just view the deep from desktop.
The ORCA’s Eye in the Sea was installed in the the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s (my old stomping grounds) MARS (Monterey Accelerated Research System). MARS is basically 20km of power and ethernet cords running into the deep-sea from shore. At the end is hub where you can plug in a camera, various scientitic equipment, and a blender for daquiris.
Whoa… That is so, so cool! Let’s get a hydrophone down there next! (And then I can pop some popcorn and watch/listen all day long.)
Thanks, now I’m totally addicted. Would love to see a mention of scale, such as the width of the ‘frightened jellyfish’ light, and some images of the regular cast of characters to help me get a handle on id’s. In a perfect world they might establish a discussion forum, or at least an FAQ. Suggested info: depth, lat/long, temperature.
OK, after poking around on MBARI’s site I found the animal image gallery:
http://www.mbari.org/mars/general/biology_photo_gallery/MARSPhotoGallery.htm
But this should be linked directly from the live video page.
the part of the metal frame (including the e-jelly – as they call it) that’s in the picture is 19,5 inches across. they had installed two parallel lasers in order to have a precise measuring instrument, but in a test they did the other day only the right one was working.
(yes, we’ve been watching pretty obsessively, and received some very friendly insights after writing to the research team. they’re working on a blog or at least a twitter of some sort. given that they’re understaffed, seems like the perfect project to crowdsource…)