The world’s first deep sea Web cam was sunk into the blackness of Monterey Bay Canyon this year, allowing scientists - and anyone with Internet access - to watch streaming video of an ocean floor habitat rarely explored.

The Eye in the Sea camera, developed with the help of Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, beams back grainy film of ethereal-looking crabs, bulbous black-eyed fish and sea pens swaying in a breezy underwater current 3,230-feet below the ocean’s surface.

But the camera is unique not just for its Web abilities. Designed in a way to be more unobtrusive than previous technology, it aims to give a truer picture of undersea life - a reality show of sorts broadcast live from the ocean floor. Instead of a noisy and brightly-lit submersible vehicle to gather data, the stationary camera is silent, plugged into a one-of-its-kind giant underwater extension cord developed by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. It also uses a specialized red light that is undetectable by sea life.

An earlier version of the camera was battery powered, limiting its ocean forays to less than a week. With the newly developed power source, it can stay submerged for months at a time.

“This offers researchers the opportunity to capture on video images of deep sea organisms that are either too smart or too shy to hang around when the noise and lights of undersea vehicles cut through the silence and darkness of the deep,” said Harbor Branch researcher Lee Frey, who was the lead engineer for the camera. “For science, the value of this lies in discovering new species and observing known organisms whose behaviors are not precipitated or influenced by the human and unaccustomed presence in the environment.”

The camera was first deployed Jan. 21 and ran a continuous stream of video for a month before experiencing technical difficulties that restrict it to running for about five hours per day.

Researchers hope to bring the camera up for repair soon and believe part of the problem could be the crushing pressure at that depth.

While the atmospheric pressure at sea level is about 14.7 pounds per square inch, or psi, the camera is experiencing a psi of about 1,300.

“The environment at this depth is very harsh and it’s an ocean realm that science has relatively little information about,” said Scott Kathey, spokesman for the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

The camera’s development began in 2000 at Harbor Branch with Frey and principal investigator Edith Widder, who earned a National Science Foundation grant for the project.

In 2005, Widder took the project with her when she became president and senior scientist for the Fort Pierce-based Ocean Research and Conservation Association. Widder continued to contract work with Harbor Branch and Frey.

Widder estimates the camera’s cost at about $600,000.

“This is giving us the opportunity to see what normal behavior is and to possibly see things that nobody has ever seen,” Widder said.

Widder acknowledges some of the scenes captured by the camera may not be very interesting to the average viewer.

Fish often appear immobilized while flecks of seaweed and other ocean organisms whiz by them.

With a limited food supply at that depth, Widder said fish conserve energy by remaining stationary for long periods of time.

“It’s like watching paint dry for most people, but it’s pretty remarkable for a scientist,” said Widder, who also designed a unique device that mimics the bioluminescence of jellyfish to lure predators to the camera.

For more of a show, she said people should begin watching the live Web stream next month when she hopes to sink the carcass of a whale or other animal near the camera to attract even more sea life.

“This is just too cool not to share with the rest of the world,” Widder said. “A lot of people don’t realize how much life is down there.”

But the two Johnson Sea Link underwater vehicles - locators of space shuttle Challenger’s fateful rocket booster and redeemers of USS Monitor artifacts - are nearly middle aged.

Reluctantly, the workhorses of deep-sea exploration are being considered for retirement by Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. The Fort Pierce facility is reviewing all of its programs and budget, which must shrink by nearly $1 million for the 2009-2010 fiscal year.

The 4-person submersibles were born at Harbor Branch in the early 1970’s.

More than 8,000 missions later, their Achilles heel is their attachment to the research vessel the Seward Johnson, which transports and deploys the 29,000-pound vehicles.

Today, unmanned submersible vehicles can be transported by any ship, and Harbor Branch officials are mulling the benefits of that kind of freedom.

“These Johnson Sea Links are tied to one ship and are costly to operate,” said Harbor Branch associate executive director Pete Tatro, who estimates $600,000 is needed annually for upkeep and maintenance. “Could we do something with a remotely activated submersible that would be a less expensive answer for the same game?”

Many researchers don’t think so and have started an online petition to keep the two ships, which are notable for their bulbous clear acrylic cockpits and ability to dive to 3,000 feet.

They argue the importance of having manned vehicles - real eyeballs in the deep - rather than cameras transmitting images.

“People say we don’t need human occupied vehicles because we have these robots,” said Edith Widder, president and senior scientist for the Fort Pierce-based Ocean Research and Conservation Association. “But many things are discovered by someone just catching something out of the corner of their eye. Cameras don’t have that capability.”

Widder estimates she’s made 200 dives in a Johnson Sea Link. She touts them for their ability to hover motionless at specific depths - something near impossible in a vehicle tethered to a ship.

From within the 5-inch thick acrylic bubble she’s witnessed vast underwater gardens, firework-like displays of bio-luminescence, giant ocean-floor amoebas and rare deep-sea six-gilled sharks.

“There is not a more wonderful experience on the planet,” Widder said of her travels in the submersibles.

The Johnson Sea Links have been involved in finding previously undiscovered oculina coral reefs, which skirt the east coast of Florida and are found no where else in the world.

And after a 100-year mystery, a Johnson Sea Link ferried the first manned recovery team 240-feet underwater to the resting place of the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor.

“We were the first bodies to actually see it and we did bring up the anchor,” said Don Liberatore, chief submersible pilot at Harbor Branch, who joined the Johnson Sea Link team shortly after the Monitor’s 1974 discovery.

Liberatore also piloted missions to locate the wreckage of the space shuttle Challenger, which exploded shortly after takeoff on Jan. 28 1986.

In February of that year, a team in one of the Johnson Sea Link’s discovered the booster rocket with the faulty O-ring in more than 1,000-feet of water.

It was the piece of the puzzle NASA scientists were looking for.

“It was a somber feeling, the whole nation was upset,” Liberatore said about the mission. “But technically we knew we were capable of doing it and we were proud they called us.”

FAU expects to decide the fate of the submersibles by the end of the summer.

Tatro said that Harbor Branch will continue its mission of ocean discovery, whether another technology is introduced or the Johnson Sea Links remain.

More than 1,600 people who signed the petition are hoping for the latter.

Source