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  • The footage you're watching right now is of a ten-foot long juvenile giant squid.

  • We've only captured the giant squid on camera in its natural habitat once before.

  • This elusive creature is infamously difficult to study and observe,

  • but thanks to advances in deep ocean robotics,

  • we can take a new look into previously unexplored oceanic depths.

  • The camera system that captured this jaw-dropping shot is called 'Medusa',

  • because it includes a lure made of LED lights designed to resemble a bioluminescent jellyfish,

  • a preferred snack of many deep sea creatures, including the giant squid.

  • Medusa represents an exciting new breakthrough in deep sea technology.

  • It uses novel techniques to help us understand more about the deep sea environment

  • and the creatures that live there,

  • hopefully helping us protect species that we know relatively little about,

  • like the giant squid, in the face of changing oceans.

  • And scientists have been working for decades to make this kind of ocean-exploring tech better.

  • The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, for example, has been a leader in this development,

  • with deep sea exploring robots like the seafloor mapping AUV, the Doc Ricketts ROV, and Ventana.

  • Advances like this are important because many oceanographers believe that more traditional

  • ocean-exploring tech is too bright and disturbing

  • essentially, it's too disruptive to capture footage of deep ocean creatures behaving naturally.

  • Their behavior would be altered by the presence of such a device.

  • Medusa is one example of a less intrusive observation system,

  • as it hangs on a line that can extend up to two thousand meters,

  • allowing scientists back on the boat to keep a respectful distance.

  • And it uses red light to illuminate what it's seeing,

  • which scientists hypothesize most deep sea creatures can't detect.

  • This idea was given new supporting evidence when the Medusa team captured this new giant squid footage,

  • as the squid wasn't scared off by the red light that helps Medusa's cameras see in the dark.

  • Another collaborative team with MBARI is also using red light and several other strategies

  • to minimize disturbance in a new vehicle called the Mesobot.

  • It's an unassuming 1.2 meters tall and about 250 kilograms, really quite small for an oceangoing robot,

  • making it able to fulfill its mission: to track individual organisms for hours at a time

  • without disrupting their natural behavior, like a little robotic private investigator!

  • It's a hybrid remotely operated vehicle that moves very slowly using large, slow-turning thrusters

  • to avoid disturbing the water around its target,

  • and it can track an individual animal as it swims or drifts with the currents.

  • And the Mesobot is not just stalking deep sea creatures

  • it also aims to help us understand more about what this part of the ocean is really like.

  • It will take measurements of salinity, temperature, and dissolved oxygen as it moves

  • and collect biological samples that will eventually yield DNA from tiny or shy creatures

  • that may have escaped detection.

  • Researchers hope this will shed more light on a relatively mysterious part of the ocean:

  • the mesopelagic zone, also known as the 'ocean twilight zone'.

  • This is the area about 200 to 1,000 meters below the ocean surface

  • where the light from the sun almost entirely disappears.

  • It's far deeper than human divers can swim,

  • and squid, salps, eels, sharks and many kinds of fish thrive here.

  • Some scientists hope the Mesobot will be able to tell us more about how life

  • in this understudied part of the ocean lives naturally,

  • and how it may change as the ocean faces threats like overfishing and climate change.

  • The Mesobot has already undergone its open ocean trials

  • and hopes to be deployed on real data-collecting missions soon

  • to help us understand more of the ocean than we ever have before.

  • After all, thanks to amazing space probe technology, we know way more about

  • what the surface of Mars looks like than we do about the ocean.

  • We just need to figure out how to study it

  • and technology like Medusa, the Mesobot, and hopefully many more ocean-venturing robots

  • will bring us one step closer to that goal.

  • For even more oceanic exploration, check out this video here

  • and make sure you subscribe to Seeker for all your exciting robotics news.

  • Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time on Seeker.

The footage you're watching right now is of a ten-foot long juvenile giant squid.

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B1 中級

科學家剛剛捕捉到這種罕見的巨型烏賊鏡頭,下面就來看看是怎麼拍的吧 (Scientists Just Captured This Rare Giant Squid Footage, Here’s How)

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    林宜悉 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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