Another night dive and another success for capturing fluorescence from the ROV! The payload developed for this had stopped working, which we’re currently troubleshooting. As such the dive flashlight was attached to the payload bar and after Paul and Chris had helped to achieve the desired weight distribution and buoyancy, we deployed the ROV in […]
This was our first day (08/01/15) of doing our own lagoon survey and it went ok. Our first site had A LOT of sea cucumbers. At the 10 m and 25 m transects there were easily a 1000 sea cucumbers. At the farther ends there were a good amount of tube worms but very few […]
Several of our group undertook a night snorkel at Airport Beach last night. The moon was full, the water was warm and the corals were busily fluorescing. We spent an hour swimming between coral bommies looking at the fishes that were active during the night, including iridescent cardinal fishes, squirrelfishes and a curious porcupine fish […]
…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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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