Shark Week AUV PR Coup
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010Autonomous Underwater Vehicle In Shark Bite Horror:
An Autonomous Underwater vehicle used for exploring the Gulf oil spill has been chomped on the hiney by a shark. From Keysnet:
Waldo, the 6-foot autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) spent 28 days at sea and found no significant traces of underwater oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill after being launched July 19th. It did however encounter a shark, when that shark bit into and damaged Waldo’s rudder.
The best part about this shark’s timing is the fact that it probably bit Waldo during Shark Week. That shark’s publicist is totally worth the money.
Here’s the main post about Waldo’s close encounter, and a bit more about what exactly the AUVs do, from NRDC, the kindly hippies who, along with Oceana, and Mote Marine Laboratory, launched Waldo on his mission:
The autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) like Waldo run for approximately 30 days at a time and NRDC’s sponsored run of Waldo ended on day 28 – after he had transmitted roughly a ½ million water sample points – when a shark bit into and damaged Waldo’s rudder and his left wing was lost. Since then, the robot has been recovered and hopefully will soon be out for another run with 7 other gliders to monitor for the oil from the submerged plumes of oil droplets in the Gulf. Just yesterday, scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution confirmed the existence of a submerged oil plume from the Gulf spill that’s at least 22 miles long – an AUV was critical to this discovery. Additional AUV runs should help us keep track the route of this oil.
It has been noted that the presence of a shark in a giant, oil slicked disaster zone was actually a really good sign that the sharks in the Gulf have not been completely destroyed by the folly of man. It is also a sign, however, of exactly how pissed the sharks are and what they’ll do if they ever find out that the oil leak was our fault.
[Thanks Botropolis]!


















