Parking Wally on a Methane Hydrate Hill

Watch as researcher Laurenz Thomsen remotely controls Wally the Crawler from his office in Bremen Germany. Laurenz uses his mouse to drive the crawler and clicks on the video window to move the camera. In this video, he positions Wally directly atop a methane hydrate outcrop, in a place where methane readings were at a maximum. Laurenz then inspects some of the exposed hydrates and a curious hole in the bacterial mat. Is it a vent?

Wally, the worlds first Internet-operated deep-sea crawler, is equipped with sensors to measure temperature, pressure, water currents, salinity, methane and turbidity. Wally also sports a pan/tilt webcam, affording detailed views of the seafloor sediments and local sea life.

Laurenz Thomsen is a professor of Geosciences, Jacobs University Bremen, Germany and an adjunct professor of Biological Oceanography for the School of Oceanography, University of Washington, Seattle. The primary focus of his research has been the carbon cycle, with particular interest in organic particle fluxes at continental margins. His publications on continental margins encompass the fields of particle transport, benthic pelagic coupling and CO2 mitigation. He will be using NEPTUNE instruments to study the carbon and methane fluxes around gas-hydrate sites.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• robotics
• gas hydrates
• methane
• oceanography
• ocean
• sea
• technology
• bacteria
• hydrates
• Jacobs University
• Bremen
• Germany

[spazz4427]

Fascinating vids......5*