What is SCINI?
SCINI is a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), which means that a tether to the surface allows the pilot to see what she sees through her camera “eyes” and control where she “swims” with her five thrusters.
SCINI finds her way around in the ocean using an integrated South Star navigation system that has been developed in partnership with Desert Star Systems. This wireless array allows us to extend the accuracy of GPS beneath the water where satellite signals cannot penetrate. And, what is SCINI finding her way towards? That is what the scientists decide, and this year SCINI will be diving deeper and in more remote locations, in order to describe Antarctic seafloor communities that have never before been seen by human eyes.
Cooperation
Where are we going?
Antarctica! This is the –est continent – the coldest, windiest, highest, driest, and roundest continent.
It is also a continent that is not owned by anyone, but is preserved for peaceful research purposes by the international Antarctic Treaty. The Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica is even more unknown than other oceans, because of its remoteness and roughness.
Science
What are we doing?
This year our goal is to create maps of the seafloor. All real exploration starts with mapping as a first step. Without knowing the lay of the land around you, how do you know where the mountains are, where the rivers go, and in which direction the sun sets? Under water and ice, it is even more difficult to see the mountains, the rivers are invisible to our eyes, and during the Antarctic summer the sun never sets. Because light is absorbed by water more than it is by air, even with SCINI’s lights we can only see a few meters in the blackness below 70 m depth.
In 2007, the first year of this project, our science goal was one of searching. We set out to relocate experiments that had been set on the seafloor up to 47 years ago. Initially designed to look at the effects of predation, the “Lost Experiments” now give us a record of how antarctic communities have changed over nearly five decades.
Engineering
How do we do this?
Manned research submersibles are not allowed to work in Antarctica because of the dangers of ice overhead. Autonomous vehicles are useful for preprogrammed surveys, but are not adaptive and responsive to new finds. A remotely operated vehicle like SCINI balances nicely in the middle – it can go deep, it does not risk lives, and it is responsive in real time. It does have limitations on tether length, but this also keeps it from becoming lost in case of a catastrophic failure!
The guiding principles of our engineering efforts are reliability, flexibility, and economy. Our time in Antarctica is limited to a few months during the summer. It is too easy for that time to slip away in fixing broken hardware instead of accomplishing significant new progress, so everything has to be tested, and retested, until component failure is a rare thing indeed. Minimizing down time is critical. Especially in a developmental effort, our strict adherence to this principle is unusual. We are very proud of running 44 consecutive missions, with a total seafloor time of 144 hours, without a single failure during our 2008 season.
When we are in Antarctica, we cannot just run to the store to replace a part. We are our own spare parts catalogue and supply. We bring spares with us, but we also make every effort to make components swappable. This means that we try to use the same resistors in everything, instead of a unique resistor in each location. We extend this concept to everything from individual components up to boards, so that we not only have to kit ourselves with fewer kinds of spares, but in desperate situations — which happen with disturbing regularity in Antarctica — we can scavenge from a non-critical system to get a critical system running.
We also make every effort to be economical. We try to use commercial off the shelf components that are industry standards and are therefore readily available and reasonably priced. As we are also using cutting edge technology, this can be a struggle when standards are still developing! We take shameless advantage of the extensive testing done by commercial companies to select the sturdiest, most dependable elements, at the best prices. We could not do this if we were designing and building one-off unique parts from the ground up. But, why reinvent the wheel? Instead we use existing motor, power, and electronic components, merged together in a specialized ROV that is accessible to all!
Education
Why do we care?
As a society, we have done a good job over the last few years in showing what science can accomplish and in demonstrating the wide diversity of things that scientists do. The plethora of web sites available to bring science into the classroom is testament to this. And many of us now know that we each have scientific interests, or inclinations, or at the very least, know to ask questions, which is what scientists do. Our next goal as a society should be to uncover and demonstrate the engineer in all of us.
Who did not take the flashlight apart (and likely fail to put it back together), resculpt the garden to divert the water and save the “town” (or destroy it), or use duct tape and paper clips to make beautiful jewelry that was so appreciated by our parental units? Engineers do all this – they figure out how things work, they fix stuff, and they invent new uses for existing bits and pieces.
With the challenges that are now facing our planet and our species, we need to use the collective power of all of our skills to find solutions to the problems. We have learned to question and to have confidence in our ability to draw conclusions from observations – to believe in our abilities to be scientists. Today, we need to know that we can repair what is broken, that we can create solutions. With all of humanity believing in our own abilities, we can overcome the global issues that we confront now, through our individual efforts as well as our cooperation.
Thank You!
Jim Oakden and John Oliver, Benthic Lab stalwarts, for ongoing inspiration, encouragement, and wonderful shoulders to cry or stand on.
DJ Osborne and Jon Erickson, MBARIites who generously shared their experience and provided very helpful guidance, as well as Kim Reisenbichler and Mike Kelly for test/training tank use.
Kent Hammerstrom, retired software engineer and dad, for creating our laser ranging software despite pesky missing dlls.
Alexandria Gallizioli, Ben Kaiser, and Jessica Madden, summer interns, for cheerful web page construction, driving, packing, and a plethora of other very diverse tasks.
Jason Smith for lending us his oscilloscope (yet again) and Lara Ferry Graham for the use of her shark tank as an ROV test tank.
Steve Dunbar and ARS for their much appreciated donation to our work.
Erica McPhee-Shaw for training such excellent physical oceanographers/engineers, and allowing us to hire them almost before they defend their theses.
Last but certainly not least, Rob Robbins, Ken Kloppenberg, Patrick Fitzgerald, Kevin Rigarlsford, John Harter, Aaron Seaman, and all of the support staff in the USAP who help us accomplish the seemingly impossible.