Oxford University 

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Before we made the trip out to London each of us had to present on a certain point of interest in London, mine was Oxford university. Each place that was presented seemed to turn out as their favorite spot in London, because of the extra connection made through the research, and Oxford was no different for me. What interested me about Oxford was that the setup for the school was so much different than any I have seen. The university was broken up into colleges in which student attended those, there is not just one Oxford but many. While the tour guide was talking in even more depth about the colleges and the famous writers, and intellectuals, the impact of the college was even greater. Not only that but the town itself was amazing as well, it is a true college town. Also as it turns out, I ate some of the best food I have had in London as well. It was an amazing experience, and wish I could spend more time exploring and understanding Oxford even more. 

At Last…

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…and it finally begins! Day 5 of our trip finally saw our gear arrive.  At breakfast we caught the tail end of an announcement over the local radio station about our work and the students’ being here on Aitutaki.  They emphasized our remotely piloted system-based monitoring of the lagoon and so created a bit of […]

Marine Lab

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The Marine lab on Aitutaki is housing a multitude of giant clams, while doing research on the impacts of amino acids in their survival. With the addition of these acids to their diets, the clams were found to survive longer and thrive better in their environment. In the wild, these clams are unlikely to survive […]

Lagoon Survey

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Since we got the rest of our stuff today I was able to get trained to survey lagoon. To do this we need 2 transect tapes, a ruler, waterproof paper, something to right on and a pencil. First we take one transect tape and go 25 meters (m) into the lagoon. Then we take your […]

Finally moving forward!

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The Aerial and Aquatic Robot Research team (aarr.piratelab.org) now has a somewhat reliable internet connection and will now have more frequent updates. The team split up this morning, half of the team joined the other sandy beach ecology group, and the rest of our team went to the main village in Aitutaki to obtain a […]

Finally moving forward!

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The team now has a somewhat reliable internet connection and will now have more frequent updates. The team split up this morning, half of the team joined the other sandy beach ecology group, and the rest of our team went to the main village in Aitutaki to obtain better internet connections, and download the files that are necessary for mapping and beginning the remotely piloted systems surveys. After returning to our hotel, the team reassembled, and the cargo finally arrived from the airport!

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We opened our luggage and to our dismay, one of our ROVs had been smashed to pieces. This came as a shock as it was in a pelican case, and the other ROV was loosely packed in a crate with foam padding. The team rushed to assemble the shattered ROV, and affix the bio-fluorescence payload to the ROV, and compensate for the chance in balance / ballast. We also assembled all of our robots, and took a picture with the rest of the teams, to publish in the local newspapers, to inform the local villagers about the work that we are doing, and the the strange looking tools that we are using.

After repairing the broken ROV (Leviathan), and mounting up the payload (on R.U.M.), we headed out to the northern part of Aitutaki and launched our experimental setup on it’s first dive.

The dive was successful, and we detected the proteins in the coral that we were looking for! There are a number of things that we need to improve before the next dive, but that will come in the following days.

Oh holy night, the proteins are brightly shining

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Tonight we launched the OpenROV equipped with the payload to detect fluorescence in the ocean. It consists of a blue LED strip (excitation source), a power source and a GoPro with a yellow filter (detection). It was launched from the North of Aitutaki in the Cook Islands where an abundance of life exists, including corals, […]

Tug o’ War with the World

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Today we all went to the island of Motukitiu on Aitutaki. This island was previously a pit stop for planes traveling the Pacific in 1950 to 1962. During this time planes could not travel far distances, so Tasmanian Empire Airways Limited (TEAL) built up this island for wealthy travelers to visit. This island has one […]