New instruments hook to the underwater lab.
Credit: David Fierstein © 2005 MBARI

We heard about the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's new underwater laboratory in a radio story last fall. When that story aired, the lab (known as the Monterey Accelerated Research System, or MARS) was just getting going, with lots of neat experiments planned. Now, few of those have become a reality.

In case you missed the first story, the MARS is essentially an underwater data hub, perched on the ocean floor almost 3,000 feet below the surface of Monterey Bay. A 32-mile cable connects the system to land, acting as a power cord and data link. Several "underwater extension cords" allow a variety of instruments to plug into the hub, getting power from land and sending back data via the cable. That constant connection is a big step forward in undersea science; without it, researchers have had to use boats to stay physically close to their instruments (something hard to do for very long), or have sent the instruments off on their own, relying on batteries to keep them running and collecting data.

Until late February, earthquake scientists at the UC Berkeley Seismological Laboratory had been using that second method with their seafloor seismic station, the Monterey Ocean Bottom Broadband (MOBB). "We had to wait three months to even know if the instruments were alive," said Barbara Romanowicz, the lab's director. But the MOBB is now plugged in to the MARS system, and is transmitting its information about earthquakes in real-time.

That new stream of information could be especially valuable in California, because the MOBB provides a unique view of the main fault system, the San Andreas, which runs along the Northern California coast. Most seismometers are land-based, and therefore positioned on the east side of the fault. The MOBB is on the west side of the fault, offering a helpful perspective on the fault's shifts and shakes.

The researchers hope that the MOBB's new stream of real-time data will improve their earthquake models, and perhaps eventually help provide early warnings about impending quakes (for more on that topic, see the TV story, Earthquakes: Breaking New Ground).

The MOBB is just one instrument using the MARS hub. A tool that uses sound waves to track fish is currently attached, and within the next six months you can expect to see a robotic DNA lab and a robot that crawls along the seafloor, collecting data on animals that live in the mud.

The Eye in the Sea. Credit: MBARI.

The Eye in the Sea is one of the coolest, gee-whiz scientific projects you'll see. It's part of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's so-called MARS project (that stands for Monterey Accelerated Research System). MARS is an undersea laboratory, set up deep on the sea floor about 30 miles offshore from Monterey.

The Eye in the Sea is one of the first research projects to be hooked up to MARS. It uses a small amount of red light to view what’s happening on the ocean floor, about 3,000 feet below the surface. The images travel through 32 miles of cable and go back to the control center on land, where researchers view real-time video of life at the "benthic" level – that is, a voyage to the bottom of the sea.

And you're going to be able to take that voyage, too.

Schoolchildren, teachers and eventually the general public will be able to see the spindly-legged crabs calle spiny kings, or the eel-like hagfish, or the giant, dark, blob-like Pacific sleeper shark.

The Eye in the Sea becomes operational in January, and researchers expect to have their school program up and running by late January or early February, depending on the success they have hooking up Eye in the Sea to the metal hub out in the middle of Monterey Bay.

All of that means that the public will be able to go to www.mbari.org beginning sometime in February and view video-cam images from half a mile deep on the sea floor.

How cool is that?

Watch video from the Eye of the Sea in the Underwater Laboratory audio slide show online.