Remotely operated vehicles
Remotely operated vehicle Doc Ricketts tethered to Research Vessel Western Flyer
The tether from the ROV to the ship delivers power to the vehicle and data and video images from the vehicle back to the ship, where they are recorded. The tether must be carefully monitored during ROV missions to prevent kinking, bending, abrasion, or breakage.
The ROVs have several toolsleds—metal frames that are bolted underneath the main body of the ROV—outfitted for various scientific missions. By putting most of the discipline-specific tools on the toolsled, it is easy to switch the tools out from say a biology dive to a geology dive, and minimizes the turnaround time between dives. For instance, scientists studying the gelatinous animals in the midwater, may use a suction sampler, which is a kind of “slurp gun” that sucks animals into a plastic canister to bring them back to shore, while scientists studying the ocean floor might use push cores, foot-long clear plastic tubes that are pushed into the seafloor to pull out samples of the sediment for further study.
