New camera technology shows the Cook Islands seabed in unparalleled detail
The first dive of the NA176 marine scientific cruise has delivered exceptional results.
One of the cruise participants, Deep Sea Power and Light, provided cutting edge new camera technology [1] and a small team of experts to commission and maintain the equipment. This is the first time this technology has been deployed to such depths anywhere in the world.
“The results ‘speak’ for themselves” said SBMA Knowledge Management Senior Technical Officer Rima Browne, “for those following the live stream of the cruise, it was a real treat seeing the video feed in real time. There is no doubt that our mission to identify the larger species present on the seabed in the Cook Islands has been boosted by these high-quality images. Certain species such as deep-sea corals need close-up images to be confidently identified from photos”.
See it for yourself: watch a short Nautilus Live clip of a “Casper” octopus encountered in
Cook Islands waters during NA176:
Casper Octopus in the Deep Sea of the Cook Islands | Nautilus Live
“SBMA and most of our collaborators are united by a strong desire to develop the scientific data to support conservation within the Cook Islands Marae Moana.” said Knowledge Management Director Dr John Parianos. “and this type of collaboration is proving to be key to providing Cook Islanders with a complete view of their Marae Moana seabed. The deep seabed is isolated and very different from the surface waters that we are familiar with.”
“An understanding of environmental state is a critical step in the structured scientific assessment of environmental impacts that is required to make decisions in the future. This assessment needs to extend to all life classes and all habitat-types of the seabed, and the expected degree of recovery after any assessed impact.”
The NA176 Deep Sea Habitats of the Cook Islands research cruise is a partnership between three institutions, SBMA, OET and NOAA [2]. The cruise ends on 21st October with a welcome event and public vessel tours planned at Avarua harbour the following day. A detailed cruise report will be issued into the public domain once the cruise is complete.
If you would like to see these images, and more in higher resolution, go to
1] The MxD SeaCam camera works at QFHD resolution, manages RGB colours separately, has very powerful zoom capabilities and perhaps most importantly has a global shutter that allows for high precision still images to be extracted from the video. All the way down to 7000 m water depth. It is coupled with LED SeaLite LSL-1000 lights that are special high colour quality versions that more faithfully reproduce natural sunlight in the subsea environment. A standard LED light will have a typical Color Rendering Index, or CRI, value of around 70, with perfect sunlight reproduction being 100. These lights have a CRI value of 90, significantly improving the colour accuracy of imagery captured with the UHD MxD SeaCam.
[2] Cook Islands SBMA provided research objectives and mission support, Ocean Exploration Trust (OET; a non-profit NGO) provided vessel and operational equipment as well as the bulk of the science team, and the United States National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), funded and helped coordinate with other participants and stakeholders via the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute (OECI). Other participants include Cook Islands National Environment Service, Ministry of Marine Resources, Tepuna Vai Marama, United States Geological Survey, University of Rhode Island.
For media enquiries, please contact: [email protected]