Sea Rover
An autonomous robotic rover, Benthic Rover II, has provided new insight into life on the abyssal seafloor, 4,000 meters (13,100 feet) beneath the surface of the ocean. A study published today in Science Robotics details the development and proven long-term operation of this rover. This innovative mobile laboratory has further revealed the role of the deep sea in cycling carbon. The data collected by this rover are fundamental to understanding the impacts of climate change on the ocean.
sea rover
Engineers at MBARI designed Benthic Rover II to handle the cold, corrosive, and high-pressure conditions of the deep sea. Constructed from corrosion-resistant titanium, plastic, and pressure-resistant syntactic foam, this rover can withstand deployments up to 6,000 meters (about 19,700 feet) deep.
After 48 hours, the rover raises the respirometer chambers and moves 10 meters (32 feet) forward, careful not to cross its previous path, and selects another site to sample. It repeats this sampling pattern over and over for the duration of deployment, typically a full year.
Engineers at the MBARI have developed an autonomous robotic rover, called Benthic Rover II, to observe weekly, seasonal, and episodic events on the abyssal seafloor. The rover has been crawling across the muddy bottom at 4,000 meters (13,100 feet), collecting oceanographic data for more than five years.
About the size of a small car, the Benthic Rover II measures 2.6 meters (8.5 feet) long, 1.7 meters (5.6 feet) wide, and 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) high. It is made of corrosion-resistant titanium, plastic, and pressure-resistant syntactic foam and is equipped with a pair of wide rubber tracks to tread gently over the muddy bottom. The rover is designed to handle the cold, corrosive, and high-pressure conditions of the deep sea and can withstand deployments up to 6,000 meters (about 19,700 feet) deep.
As animals and microbes digest organic matter, they use oxygen and release carbon dioxide in a specific ratio. Knowing how much oxygen those animals and microbes use is crucial for understanding carbon remineralization. After 48 hours, the rover raises the respirometer chambers and moves 10 meters (32 feet) forward, careful not to cross its previous path, and selects another site to sample. It repeats this sampling pattern over and over for the duration of deployment, typically a full year.
The examples illustrate how sea rovers were pirates who sailed on ships to steal from other ships. Blackbeard was a well-known sea rover who was feared by many sailors. The second example shows that the sea rover's ship was designed for battle with cannons and a crew of fierce pirates.
To read of sea roving's various incarnations - piracy, privateering, buccaneering, la flibuste, la course - is to bring forth romantic, and often violent, imagery. Indeed, much of this imagery has become a literary and cinematic cliche?. And what an image it is! But its truth is by halves, and paradoxically it is the picaresque imagery of Pyle, Wyeth, Sabatini, and Hollywood that is often closer to the reality, while the historical details of arms, tactics, and language are often inaccurate or entirely anachronistic.Successful sea rovers were careful practitioners of a complex profession that sought wealth by stratagem and force of arms. Drawn from the European tradition, yet of various races and nationalities, they raided both ship and town throughout much of the world from roughly 1630 until 1730. Using a variety of innovative tactics and often armed with little more than musket and grenade, many of these self-described "soldiers and privateers" successfully assaulted fortifications, attacked shipping from small craft, crossed the mountains and jungles of Panama, and even circumnavigated the globe. Successful sea rovers were often supreme seamen, soldiers, and above all, tacticians. It can be argued that their influence on certain naval tactics is felt even today. The Sea Rover's Practice is the only book that describes in exceptional detail the tactics of sea rovers of the period - how they actually sought out and attacked vessels and towns. Accessible to both the general and the more scholarly reader, it will appeal not only to those with an interest in piracy and in maritime, naval, and military history, but also to mariners in general, tall-ship and ship-modeling enthusiasts, tacticians and military analysts, readers of historical fiction, writers, and the adventurer in all of us.
researchers at monterey bay aquarium research institute (MBARI) unveil the benthic rover II, an autonomous, deep-sea roaming robot. while the deep sea is the largest living space on the planet, the team at MBARI notes that less is known about it than any other planet in the solar system. the newly designed rover has embarked into the unknown in an effort to collect continuous long-term data to observe and report weekly, seasonal, and episodic events on the abyssal sea floor.
the benthic rover II traveled to a depth of 4,000 meters (13,100 feet) to explore the muddy floor of the deep sea, and will autonomously collect oceanographic data for more than five years. the intrepid robot, about the size of a small car, is equipped with onboard cameras and other such instruments which capture glimpses of the mysterious communities which occupy the floor of the deep.
Scientists and biologists spent 20 days at Crater Lake during the summer of 1987 studying the chemistry, biology, hydrology, and geology of the bottom of the lake. The research group used various instruments including the rover vehicle pictured to the left.
Reviewed by: Buccaneers and Privateers: The Story of the English Sea Rover, 1675-1725 by Richard Frohock Rebekah Mitsein (bio) Buccaneers and Privateers: The Story of the English Sea Rover, 1675-1725. Richard Frohock. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2012. 187 pp. Richard Frohock's Buccaneers and Privateers is aptly subtitled The Story of the English Sea Rover for two reasons. First, the book seeks to provide a coherent narrative of English buccaneers and privateers who sailed the South Seas from 1675 to 1725 by chronologically tracing their lineage from George Cusack to George Shelvocke. Second, it documents the [End Page 249] ways that sea-voyage narratives both about and by these characters made the English sea rover a staple, if evolving, figure in the public imagination across the turn of the century. Considering the ambiguous legal and moral space privateers occupied, the author foregrounds the crucial function of language in their self-fashioning as he examines how various buccaneers and privateers used narratives of their sea voyages to justify their conduct in response to third-party accounts that demonized and sensationalized their exploits. However, more than simply shaping the individual, Frohock suggests, these narratives also played an important role in mediating the borders of England's empire for an English audience. Buccaneers and Privateers is significant for considering the role that the ambiguous and nationally unsettled space of Caribbean waters played in how readers of these stories imagined the globe and England's own place in it.
In chapter 5, Frohock explores how William Dampier capitalized on this potential in order to create his own privateering not as piracy but as a scientific voyage. However, he argues that Dampier also drew on a lineage of sea-voyage narratives to create a vital role for buccaneers in imperial expansion. Touching briefly on Dampier's A New Voyage Round the World but focusing mostly on the understudied "Two Voyages to Campeachy," Frohock argues that Dampier positions the buccaneer as the forerunner of England's empire, establishing points of contact with the Spanish and with Native Americans, forging alliances and gathering information. By doing so, Dampier "imagines a roving past transforming into future settlement" (108). Chapter 6 covers the narratives of Edward Cooke and Woodes Rogers: two figures who, contrary to Dampier, overtly condemned previous sea rovers in order to fashion themselves as a completely new kind of voyager, concerned with gathering accurate, scientific information rather... 041b061a72