scholarly journals A cost‐effective video system for a rapid appraisal of deep‐sea benthic habitats: the Azor drift‐cam

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Dominguez‐Carrió ◽  
Jorge Fontes ◽  
Telmo Morato
Keyword(s):  
Deep Sea ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Benthic Habitats ◽  
Video System ◽  
Rapid Appraisal

scholarly journals A New Inhibitor to Prevent Hydrate Formation

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Bazvand M
Keyword(s):  
Gas Hydrates ◽  
Gas Hydrate ◽  
Deep Sea ◽  
Hydrate Formation ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Vinyl Pyrrolidone ◽  
Flow Assurance ◽  
Main Structure ◽  
Poly Vinyl Pyrrolidone ◽  
Prevention Methods

Due to the growing demand for energy as well as the depletion of shallow land reservoirs, it sounds more important to utilize deep sea reservoirs. Due to their special conditions, drilling and production of these reservoirs face more problems. The science that helps us avoiding problems during operation is called flow assurance. One of the important issues in flow assurance is to prevent formation of gas hydrates. One of gas hydrates preventing methods is to use of inhibitors. Using of inhibitors is a cost- effective and eco-friendly method; so, it is used more nowadays. This paper introduces a new hydrate inhibitor that has been developed from the modification of one of the most widely used inhibitors present in the industry, Poly Vinyl Pyrrolidone, to improve its efficiency. The main structure of the paper is about what is the gas hydrate and its prevention methods. Finally, compare different inhibitors with new one. The results show that hydrate formation time for all polymers is approximately the same, while a half of new inhibitor in compare with amount of others inhibitors causes the same results. This matter shows a double efficiency, and this means a saving of double Polymer consumption.

scholarly journals A Cost-Effective Approach to the Risk Reduction of Cable Fault Triggered by Laying Repeaters of Fiber-Optic Submarine Cable Systems in Deep-Sea

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 939
Author(s):  
Yukitoshi Ogasawara ◽  
Wataru Natsu
Keyword(s):  
Deep Sea ◽  
Mechanical Stability ◽  
Optical Amplifiers ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Optical Signal ◽  
Submarine Cable ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Cost Effective Approach ◽  
Cable Systems ◽  
Cable Damage

Long-distance submarine cable systems, such as the transoceanic system, generally consist of a series of cables and repeaters. Repeater units are spaced at regular intervals to boost the attenuated optical signal and presently contain optical amplifiers in a pressure vessel made of copper alloy. Since the repeater unit is more massive than the cable, it pulls the cable catenary locally toward the seabed. In the 1990s, several studies numerically simulated cable behavior in the water and showed that the seabed slack runs short, and the seabed cable tension increases just before the repeater reaches the seabed. Therefore, it has been pointed out that an unarmored cable with a polyethylene sheath can be easily damaged. However, no reports have been published regarding the actual situation of cable faults related to the laying of repeaters. This study quantitatively analyzes the mechanism of cable damage related to the laying of repeaters, based on experiments, simulations, maintenance records, and a comparative analysis between the simulation results and actual cable faults. Cost-effective methods to mitigate cable faults triggered by laying a repeater in the deep sea are also explored to ensure mechanical stability during the design lifetime.

scholarly journals The National Geographic Society Deep-Sea Camera System: A Low-Cost Remote Video Survey Instrument to Advance Biodiversity Observation in the Deep Ocean

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonatha Giddens ◽  
Alan Turchik ◽  
Whitney Goodell ◽  
Michelle Rodriguez ◽  
Denley Delaney
Keyword(s):  
Deep Sea ◽  
Survey Methods ◽  
Deep Ocean ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Marine Biodiversity ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
National Geographic Society ◽  
Camera System ◽  
National Geographic ◽  
New Instrument

There is a growing need for marine biodiversity baseline and monitoring data to assess ocean ecosystem health, especially in the deep sea, where data are notoriously sparse. Baited cameras are a biological observing method especially useful in the deep ocean to estimate relative abundances of scavenging fishes and invertebrates. The National Geographic Society Exploration Technology Lab developed an autonomous benthic lander platform with a baited camera system to conduct stationary video surveys of deep-sea megafauna. The first-generation landers were capable of sampling to full ocean depth, however, the form factor, power requirements, and cost of the system limited deployment opportunities. Therefore, a miniaturized version (76 cm × 76 cm × 36 cm, 18 kg in air) was developed to provide a cost-effective method to observe ocean life to 6000 m depth. Here, we detail this next-generation deep-sea camera system, including the structural design, scientific payload, and the procedures for deployment. We provide an overview of NGS deep-sea camera system deployments over the past decade with a focus on the performance improvements of the next-generation system, which began field operations in 2017 and have performed 264 deployments. We present example imagery and discuss the strengths and limitations of the instrument in the context of existing complementary survey methods, and for use in down-stream data products. The key operational advantages of this new instrument are spatial flexibility and cost-efficiency. The instrument can be hand-deployed by a single operator from a small craft concurrent with other shipboard operations. The main limitation of the system is battery power, which allows for 6 h of continuous recording, and takes up to 8 h to recharge between deployments. Like many baited-camera methods, this instrument is specialized to measure the relative abundance of mobile megafauna that are attracted to bait, which results in a stochastic snapshot of the species at the deployment location and time. The small size and ease of deployment of this next-generation camera system allows for increased sample replication on expeditions, and presents a path forward to advance cost-effective biological observing and sustained monitoring in the deep ocean.

Deep-Sea Benthic Habitats

2016 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul A. Tyler ◽  
Maria Baker ◽  
Eva Ramirez-Llodra
Keyword(s):  
Deep Sea ◽  
Benthic Habitats

scholarly journals MinION-in-ARMS: Nanopore Sequencing To Expedite Barcoding Of Specimen-Rich Macrofaunal Samples From Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jia Jin Marc Chang ◽  
Yin Cheong Aden Ip ◽  
Andrew G. Bauman ◽  
Danwei Huang
Keyword(s):  
Sanger Sequencing ◽  
Size Fraction ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Marine Biodiversity ◽  
Nanopore Sequencing ◽  
Benthic Habitats ◽  
Operational Taxonomic Units ◽  
Cost Effective Alternative ◽  
Clustering Patterns ◽  
Reef Monitoring

AbstractAutonomous Reef Monitoring Structure (ARMS) are standardised devices for sampling biodiversity in complex marine benthic habitats such as coral reefs. When coupled with DNA sequencing, these devices greatly expand our ability to document marine biodiversity. Unfortunately, the existing workflow for processing macrofaunal samples (>2-mm) in the ARMS pipeline—which involves Sanger sequencing—is expensive, laborious, and thus prohibitive for ARMS researchers. Here, we propose a faster, more cost-effective alternative by demonstrating a successful application of the MinION-based barcoding approach on the >2mm-size fraction of ARMS samples. All data were available within 3.5–4 h, and sequencing costs relatively low at approximately US$3 per MinION barcode. We sequenced the 313-bp fragment of the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) for 725 samples on both MinION and Illumina platforms, and retrieved 507–584 overlapping barcodes. MinION barcodes were highly accurate (~99.9%) when compared with Illumina reference barcodes. Molecular operational taxonomic units inferred between MinION and Illumina barcodes were consistently stable, and match ratios demonstrated highly congruent clustering patterns (≥0.96). Our method would make ARMS more accessible to researchers, and greatly expedite the processing of macrofaunal samples; it can also be easily applied to other small-to-moderate DNA barcoding projects (<10,000 specimens) for rapid species identification and discovery.

scholarly journals Repeatable Semantic Reef-Mapping through Photogrammetry and Label-Augmentation

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 659 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matan Yuval ◽  
Iñigo Alonso ◽  
Gal Eyal ◽  
Dan Tchernov ◽  
Yossi Loya ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Computer Vision ◽  
Slope Angle ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Semantic Segmentation ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Marine Ecology ◽  
Benthic Habitats ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Natural Systems

In an endeavor to study natural systems at multiple spatial and taxonomic resolutions, there is an urgent need for automated, high-throughput frameworks that can handle plethora of information. The coalescence of remote-sensing, computer-vision, and deep-learning elicits a new era in ecological research. However, in complex systems, such as marine-benthic habitats, key ecological processes still remain enigmatic due to the lack of cross-scale automated approaches (mms to kms) for community structure analysis. We address this gap by working towards scalable and comprehensive photogrammetric surveys, tackling the profound challenges of full semantic segmentation and 3D grid definition. Full semantic segmentation (where every pixel is classified) is extremely labour-intensive and difficult to achieve using manual labeling. We propose using label-augmentation, i.e., propagation of sparse manual labels, to accelerate the task of full segmentation of photomosaics. Photomosaics are synthetic images generated from a projected point-of-view of a 3D model. In the lack of navigation sensors (e.g., a diver-held camera), it is difficult to repeatably determine the slope-angle of a 3D map. We show this is especially important in complex topographical settings, prevalent in coral-reefs. Specifically, we evaluate our approach on benthic habitats, in three different environments in the challenging underwater domain. Our approach for label-augmentation shows human-level accuracy in full segmentation of photomosaics using labeling as sparse as 0.1%, evaluated on several ecological measures. Moreover, we found that grid definition using a leveler improves the consistency in community-metrics obtained due to occlusions and topology (angle and distance between objects), and that we were able to standardise the 3D transformation with two percent error in size measurements. By significantly easing the annotation process for full segmentation and standardizing the 3D grid definition we present a semantic mapping methodology enabling change-detection, which is practical, swift, and cost-effective. Our workflow enables repeatable surveys without permanent markers and specialized mapping gear, useful for research and monitoring, and our code is available online. Additionally, we release the Benthos data-set, fully manually labeled photomosaics from three oceanic environments with over 4500 segmented objects useful for research in computer-vision and marine ecology.

How Thorium-Based Molten Salt Reactors Can Provide Clean, Safe, and Cost-Effective Technology for Deep-Sea Shipping

2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-72
Author(s):  
Jan Emblemsvåg
Keyword(s):  
Molten Salt ◽  
Deep Sea ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Economic Feasibility ◽  
Fuel Oil ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Molten Salt Reactor ◽  
Heavy Fuel Oil ◽  
Effective Technology ◽  
Large Vessels

AbstractDeep-sea shipping is one of the major polluters in the world. Unlike for smaller ships, there is currently no feasible and competitive alternative for deep-sea shipping. This fleet uses large, two-stroke engines running on heavy fuel oil (HFO), which in total produce more pollution than all of Germany combined. It is therefore desirable to find a better technology to power these large ships, and a thorium-based molten salt reactor (TMSR) is suggested here. Not only is this technology safe and clean, but it is also extremely powerful allowing these large vessels to run for years without refueling. The question is “What are the economics?” This paper will investigate the comparative costs of TMSR compared to the two-stroke HFO technology, including the uncertainties that exist. The purpose of the paper is to primarily provide a conceptual, economic feasibility study to provide an impetus for future research so that this power source can one day become a reality.

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