ROVs for Coral Mapping

The University of North Carolina Wilmington is working with NOAA to create coral maps in the Caribbean using a Mohawk ROV

“…the ship maps the seafloor using a multi-beam system during the night and our team groundtruths the multi-beam during the day,” said Jason White, one of two remotely operated vehicle (ROV) pilots, or technicians, on the team. “So the multi-beam will show all of the features and we will take the ROV to investigate these features.”

Full article at: Starnewsonline.com 17jul19

Piglet Squid

Life is so AMAZING and scientists are still discovering such unusual creatures underwater:

Helicocranchia sp. spotted at ~1500m near Palmyra Atoll in the Pacific Remote Islands Monument

ALERT – Turnigy 10Ahr battery

To all the BlueROV2 pilots out there: Turnigy has recently (and unexpectedly) increased the size of their 4S, 10Ahr battery, available from HobbyKing.  The new version of this battery no longer fits easily into the Blue Robotics 3” battery enclosure.  It can be inserted but the fit is so tight that the acrylic enclosure edge cuts into / scrapes the battery external pouch and can result in safety issues.

We suggest that, if you need replacement batteries short-term, you switch to either the Turnigy 4S, 8Ahr battery or the Blue Robotics 4S, 18Ahr battery.  We will let you know as soon as we have a better solution to this issue.

UPDATE 28/11/19:

To update you quickly, we purchased four Turnigy 10Ahr batteries this week and found that the dimensions fell within declared specifications, and they all fit into the 3” battery enclosures.  What a relief!
We apologise for raising the alarm earlier but there could still be a possibility that you, like us, might receive a larger Turnigy 10Ahr battery.   There does not appear to be any batch number or any other marker to identify one from the other, so the best we can suggest is that you test-fit any new Turnigy batteries you receive before going into the field.

Giant Squid Spotted in US Waters

A juvenile giant squid was caught on video earlier this year at a depth of 759m, responding to a pulsing LED light experiment on a NOAA expedition. This elusive species was last seen on video in 2012 off Japan.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/science/giant-squid-cephalopod-video.html
From NYTimes 21jun19