It will deliver information about sediments and life at those chilling depths

Jan 3, 2007 12:22 GMT  ·  By

British researchers have now at their disposal a deep-diving remote operated vehicle (ROV) which will reveal for the first time the mysteries of the Antarctic from 6.5km (four miles) depth.

Isis will offer details about the effects of glaciers on the ocean floor and will spot the animals that inhabit these waters in a three weeks mission starting in mid-January. Isis will be placed on the British Antarctic Survey's ship, the RSS James Clark Ross, and it will explore the Marguerite Bay area on the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula.

The submarine vessel, based at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), Southampton, was designed in the US in collaboration with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and is inspired by the WHOI's Jason II ROV. "Isis was built to withstand enormous pressure," explained Peter Mason, the Isis project manager at NOC.

Its measurements: 2.7m (9ft) length, 2m (6.5ft) high and 1.5m (5ft) wide, and weighs about 3,000kg (6,600lb); 10 kilometres of cable connect it to its "mother ship"; this way the scientists control the vehicle and receive the collected data in real-time. "On the ROV were lights, cameras to produce high-quality video and still pictures, sonars for acoustic navigation and imaging, and two remotely controlled manipulator arms to collect samples or place scientific instruments on the sea-bed", said Mason.

"Isis also had extra capacity to carry a range of scientific tools, such as borers, nets etc, so that scientists could tailor the vehicle to their research needs."

Isis will make a detailed investigation of the sea-floor sediments, which have been delivered to Marguerite Bay by the massive ice-sheets that covered the bay during the last glaciation, about 20,000 years ago, in order to better understand the past glacial activity in the Antarctic. "The environmental history of the Antarctic is held in these sediments," said professor Julian Dowdeswell, director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge. "Using the ROV, we can look at the sea-floor and its sub-surface structure on a very detailed scale."

Professor Paul Tyler, a deep-sea biologist at NOC, said: "I'm interested in the effects of glaciers on the sea-bed and how this affects the fauna - the animals. I'm also interested in how the animal life in Antarctica changes as one goes deeper and deeper into the water. Using the real-time imagery from the ROV, we will be able to look at what is happening as it happens, helping us to answer questions such as why some creatures exist at one depth and not another."

"We are hoping to see a whole bunch of large creatures such as star fish, sea cucumbers, sea fans, sea pens, etc, that inhabit the deep shelf slope and abyssal depths."

"Essentially no-one has explored Antarctica using a ROV at these depths."

Next Isis mission will be on the deep-sea floor off the Portuguese coast.

Image credit: National Oceanography Centre, Southampton