Main content | back to top
Roving the ocean’s depths
Water covers over two-thirds of the world’s surface, yet we have explored only a fraction of it. Scientists believe the ocean depths are home to thousands of unknown species. Now, thanks to deep-sea robots normally used by the energy industry, they are learning more about these creatures.
On a drilling platform in the Norwegian Sea, scientists gather round a screen showing images from the seabed. Nearly 1,500 metres below, light from a remotely-controlled robot (ROV) equipped with a video camera illuminates the pitch black. Suddenly the scientists catch sight of a rare octopus, one of any little-known species that thrive here.
“Deep water remains a great unknown,” says Andrew Gates, marine biologist at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK. “The high cost of equipment to explore at these depths restricts researchers to just a fragment of this vast habitat.”
Borrowing robots
An ROV core sampler collects sediment from the sea floor at a depth of 1,452m at Dalsnuten in the Norwegian Sea
Andrew and his colleagues hatched plans for a novel scientific project that would help. After talking to ROV operators, they realised that oil and gas companies use many more ROVs in deep water than scientists had access to worldwide. These car-sized robots can operate at depths where the pressure is too great for human divers.
The collaborative project, known as SERPENT, has set up research agreements that allow scientists to work with undersea robots at drilling locations when not in use. In turn, oil and gas companies learn how best to limit the impact of their drilling. The SERPENT team has worked from Shell platforms in the Atlantic and the Norwegian Sea, using robots to sample organisms from the seabed.
Underwater life
A Dumbo octopus (cirrate octopods) spotted at Dalsnuten in the Norwegian Sea
The robots’ video and lighting systems reveal rarely seen creatures and relay the images back to the scientists on the platform. At South Uist off the coast of the Shetland Islands, for instance, Andrew saw a rarely-spotted jellyfish on screen – the first recorded sighting since 1880.
SERPENT has gathered thousands of films and photographs of species and analysed hundreds of sediment samples to help build up a picture of the ocean’s depths. Using the drilling and production platforms also gives the biologists a unique opportunity for research. “We can return to the exactly same spot in the ocean and assess natural changes over time,” says Andrew.
Andrew's work is helping oil and gas companies to better understand the impact of their operations on life at the bottom of the sea. In the north-east Atlantic, for example, it is now known that steps companies have taken – such as the introduction of cleaner, water-based drilling fluids – generally limits this impact to a radius of 100 metres.
The information gathered could give operators further insight into how best to protect particularly sensitive habitats, such as deep-water corals and organisms that subsist on oil and gas molecules, while still accessing energy deep below.
“Thanks to these partnerships we are starting to unravel some of the mysteries of the deep,” says Andrew. “We are gaining a good understanding of the marine life down around exploration sites, and energy companies will learn how to better conserve it during their operations.”