An eye at the bottom of the sea

By Suzanne Wentley
Posted at 03:18 PM on June 08, 2006

The main mission of the last submersible dive, it turned out, was to retrieve The Eye in the Sea, a large underwater video camera attached to a bait box that records animal movements every few minutes for days. The idea is to see what the submersible -- the huge vehicle that probably scares away a bunch of wildlife -- misses.

Yesterday, the currents were so rough under the surface that they couldn't find The Eye in the Sea. Today, the R/V Seward Johnson's second mate Jack Greenberg positioned the ship so the sub landed exactly next to the camera! They picked it up with no problem, and Ericka Raymond, a scientist with Ocean Research & Conservation, was there when the sub came back on board.

It's a big piece of equipment with a huge metal frame. The bait box was filled with raw snapper and other fish.

Ericka was able to hook up her computer to the computer inside the camera, and she saw within minutes a really big six-gill shark swam up to it and poked it with its nose! She feared it would turn the camera over, but it didn't. Dozens of crabs quickly appeared, crawling all over the bait box and nearby corals to get at the box's contents. Then a meter-long conger eel swam into the black-and-white, dimly lit picture.

Ericka said it would take hours to download the information, so she can start to analyze it. Wonder what else the camera captured? Meanwhile, the submersible's battery is charging and scientists are preparing for their last dive of the trip!

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