Researchers from MBARI and NOAA are using underwater robots and a robotic laboratory to study potentially toxic algal blooms in Lake Erie.

Alison Sweeney I have been invited along on this expedition as a guest with Kakani’s group, from my biophysics lab at Yale University. Kakani’s group is interested in mechanical bioinspiration—how do very small animals move through water? The answers are often very counterintuitive. In my case, I am interested in optical bioinspiration, where life’s solutions …

  Hi, I’m Joost Daniels and I’m a research tech in the Bioinspiration Group. In true Bioinspiration fashion, my main job on this week-long cruise consists of two parts: bringing the lab to the ocean, and bringing the ocean to the lab. For the former, we’ve brought our DeepPIV instrument along, mounted on the remotely …

A new research paper by MBARI and Taiwanese researchers shows how mysterious hills and pits may have formed in the deep seafloor off Taiwan.

I joined MBARI in February of this year to work with Kakani Katija and the Bioinspiration Group to build EyeRIS, perhaps the first ever deep-sea plenoptic (3D) imaging system. This project, funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, aims to develop a suite of 3D imaging systems for studying particle fields, small-scale fluid mechanics, …

  I’m Susan von Thun and I work in MBARI’s video lab. The video lab is the group that takes all of the video produced from the many MBARI video platforms and archives it in a centralized video library. We watch the video, recording observations about the ocean life, habitat, equipment, and anything of interest …

Diana Li This year, I received the best birthday present—an invitation to go on a six-day expedition out in Monterey Bay on the R/V Western Flyer with Kakani Katija’s BioInspiration Group at MBARI! Hey y’all, my name is Diana Li, and I’m a recent graduate from Stanford’s Ph.D. program in Biology. I studied how the …

Study confirms that autonomously collected samples of eDNA are equivalent to samples collected using traditional, manual methods.

The UN is urged to include the midwater in upcoming discussions about management of life in the open ocean.

An MBARI summer intern develops an open-source project for people who want to create their own animal-camera tag.

In late June researchers from MBARI joined engineers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to test a new breed of undersea robot.

A new paper reveals how oceanographers can utilize robots to learn more about oceanic eddies and their inhabitants.

All the samples ever! Someone once asked me to describe my job. In the most sarcastic description I could think up, I said: I poke holes in the ocean to watch them fill back up to see who or what recolonizes the empty area. After a month, I then poke another hole to take them …

The food pyramid on a ship: Michelle Obama, if you’re reading this, stop right now. One of the most bittersweet things about being at sea—did someone say sweet? I’m hungry. Sorry, had to go to the galley. Anyway, all the food. All the delicious food is the bittersweet thing about being at sea. And without …

And we’re off! The C3PO expedition is off to a great start! We started off the cruise by testing out our emergency gear, a.k.a. Gumby suits. The struggle to get these suits on was real, but in the end we persevered and all got into them safely! It has been non-stop action since we left …

A new paper shows how strong currents carry sand-sized particles 50 kilometers down Monterey Canyon.

In a program that could revolutionize environmental monitoring and fisheries management, MBARI's Environmental Sample Processor is collecting environmental DNA from a coastal creek just north of Monterey Bay.

When the Haddock lab is at sea, we use different technologies to explore and collect the many interesting species we hope to study. The main tool is MBARI’s underwater robot, the remotely operated vehicle ROV Doc Ricketts. The Doc Ricketts has cameras, lights, two manipulator arms and sampling chambers that the ROV pilots and scientists …

Everyone says you can’t really understand an ecosystem until you’ve experienced it for yourself, but it’s surprisingly true. As a data technician in Steve Haddock’s lab, I work with the existing data in the Video Annotation and Reference System (VARS) database. Because of this, I don’t work hands-on with the organisms I study, electing instead …

Many deep-sea species have never been seen or collected before. Nevertheless, we can learn a great deal by studying them with next-generation laboratory equipment and methods like optical oxygen microsensors, high-pressure instruments, genome-scale sequencing, protein purification, and gene cloning and expression. For the DEEPC project, MBARI Scientist Steve Haddock and collaborator Erik Thuesen, of The …