Wild Blue Yonder

Moving from space to ocean exploration, an engineer illuminates mysteries of the deep sea.

By Deborah Lee Rose 

Kakani Katija dreams big. As an ice dancer on the US International Figure Skating Team, she aspired to the Olympics. She made team alternate for the Salt Lake City Winter Games in 2002 while earning her undergraduate degree. Now a principal engineer for the Bioinspiration Lab at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), Katija has large ambitions for the field of ocean science: to identify all marine life.

Growing up, Katija watched original Star Trek reruns with her father. She connected with the mythical crew’s mission: to find life-forms beyond Earth from whom humans could learn. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aeronautics and astronautics, but with limited opportunities to reach space, she pivoted to another mysterious expanse—the ocean’s depths. About 80 percent remains unexplored, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Katija pursued a PhD in bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology, during which she learned of the lack of access and technology for scientists studying life in the sea. Today, she leads a team developing novel imaging and illumination systems to examine little-known ocean organisms and discover new species. She boldly goes where few have gone before—remotely, with robotic submarines’ help—down to 4,000 meters below the surface.

Among the animals her MBARI team “captures” using remote visual technologies are giant larvaceans. These zooplankton (animal plankton) measure up to 10 cm long and are shaped like tadpoles. They secrete mucus that balloons into “snot palaces” ten times their size. “Mucus is ubiquitous in the ocean,” Katija explains. “Complex mucous structures are made by animals for feeding, health, and protection.”

Because the larvaceans are too fragile to collect, behaviors must be observed in the sea creatures’ natural habitats. When the research institute’s 11-ton remote operating vehicle (ROV) descends underwater, pilots on board the ship maneuver the submersible close to a larvacean. Then Katija’s job becomes literally laser focused, as the pilots remotely operate the vehicle and aim a deep-sea particle image velocimetry (DeepPIV) laser at the animals. Adapted for undersea research by Katija and a team of engineers, scientists, and submersible pilots, DeepPIV projects a 1-mm-thick laser sheet to light up the translucent constructions and particles flowing through the mucous chambers. A video camera records particles’ movement throughout the observation.

Data show the mucous structures filter 40–80 liters of seawater per hour (much higher than previously known) while delivering larvaceans’ food stream: both carbon-based particles and minute bits of plastic pollution. The gelatinous organisms remove significant carbon from the upper ocean, ejecting their particle-loaded mucous nets toward the deep sea and ocean bottom.

Analogous to a CT scan visually “slicing” a human organ, slight forward and backward movements of the ROV enable the laser to create cross-sections of larvacean architecture. With a series of such images, Katija and collaborators generate 3D reconstructions to virtually “fly” through larvaceans’ inner filters. “We have a way to visualize these structures deep below the surface,” she observes, “and can finally understand how they function and what roles they play.” Her team is exploring ways to integrate AI so underwater robotic vehicles can autonomously follow and record elusive marine animals on video.

What can we learn from animals we haven’t even discovered yet? Katija’s hope is that animals in once-unreachable realms could inspire far-reaching engineering and scientific advances. Understanding larvaceans’ structures and strategies, she predicts, could prompt bioinspired evolution in engineering of water filtration systems, 3D printers, and complex inflatables for underwater and space use.

The creatures’ fluidity of motion could also impact robotics—a field in which, “no matter what we do, we can’t seem to emulate the maneuverability of animals in the natural world,” the engineer notes. Current exploration vehicles such ROVs are rigid in design. But Katija dreams of autonomous vehicles engineered to be more like the squishy, dynamic creatures of the deep that dance before her eyes.

 

Deborah Lee Rose is a STEM author and national award winner for books for young readers including Beauty and the Beak, Astronauts Zoom!, and Scientists Get Dressed.
© Joost Daniels,  2019 MBARI

 

Look Alive

Engineers designed a pioneering underwater camera to investigate the ocean’s hidden creatures.

By Deborah Lee Rose 

To reveal secrets of the deep sea—such as the inner workings of gelatinous species like giant larvaceans—bioengineer Kakani Katija and her team at California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) are literally laser focused.

Simultaneously, MBARI engineers are zooming in with a first-of-its-kind 4K-resolution underwater video camera, to see and capture for research fine details on the inside and outside of various marine species. Developed via a collaboration between the institute and DeepSea Power & Light, a company with expertise in glass camera domes at pressure, the 100-pound camera plunges as deep as 4,000 meters (13,100 feet) while riding on an MBARI remote operating vehicle.

The ultra-high-definition SeaCam’s resolution (at 3840 by 2160 pixels, four times standard HD video) and frame rate (at 60 frames per second, two times previous underwater cameras’ speed) deliver astonishing results, says former MBARI electrical engineer Mark Chaffey, who led development of the technology. Among new scientific revelations the camera has enabled: visual identification of stinging “harpoon” cells on the surface of a rarely seen giant phantom jelly that stretches 10 meters (33 feet).

Over the next 10 years, the pioneering technology will produce an enormous amount of data to identify new ocean species and give a truer, more complex picture of known species’ adaptations, including how they defend and propel themselves and survive in extreme habitats. Discovering such details as animals’ textures, colors, and means of locomotion can completely change scientists’ and engineers’ understanding of how these animals interact with each other and their specific habitat. “You can’t have too much detail,” observes MBARI Bioinspiration Lab electrical engineer Paul Roberts, who is now leading development of a second camera to be affixed to another remote operating vehicle.

MBARI inaugurated the use of HD cameras underwater more than 20 years ago. The most recent imaging challenge was to adapt broadcast-quality 4K technology, designed to work in air (including for Olympic sports coverage), to capture undersea video while withstanding crushing water pressures reaching 6,000 psi. To ensure that the 4K camera would continue producing high-resolution, low-distortion imagery reliably, over potentially hundreds of dives annually, engineers at DeepSea Power & Light tested the camera housing technology through 20,000 cycles in a specially built pressure chamber.

The team also had to address such challenges as how to

• operate the camera remotely for zoom, pan, and tilt;
• protect it from saltwater corrosion (with a titanium housing);
• reinforce it against extreme pressure (behind a hemispherical, optically clear dome);
• prevent the microelectronics from overheating during long hours of operation (by thermal dissipation of heat into surrounding seawater).

Adapting the optics of the main camera lens for underwater use yielded an innovative system of four extra lenses in front of that main lens. All five lenses were laser aligned to both the camera and the hemispherical optical dome. Spacing from one lens to the next needed to be precise to the order of 0.01 mm. “Ocean engineering is such a new field, you can build a whole new instrument and discover brand-new things,” says Roberts.

Footage shot by the new 4K-resolution camera will give both scientists and members of the public the clearest view yet of hard-to-reach marine realms, spotlighting extraordinary creatures in their natural habitat. Another huge advantage: no deep dive risk to humans. As Roberts notes, “This camera brings us closer than ever before to capturing what scientists could see with their own eyes.”

Starting this spring, new and never-before-seen video footage and frame captures will be part of Monterey Bay Aquarium’s exhibition Into the Deep: Exploring Our Undiscovered Ocean. Those who can’t visit in person can experience underwater 4K video online.

 

Deborah Lee Rose has won four national awards for her STEM children’s books. Her newest book about marine wildlife is Swoop and Soar: How Science Rescued Two Osprey Orphans and Found Them a New Home in the Wild.