Monday, May 2, 2011

Deep-sea robot to probe Great Barrier Reef

ABC (Austrlia) News: Deep-sea robot to probe Great Barrier Reef
Japanese researchers will head to Osprey Reef on a boat chartered from Cairns in far north Queensland to scan parts of the Great Barrier Reef with a special deep-sea robot.

Project leader Dhugal Lindsay says the robotic device can dive to 1,000 metres and will record high definition video and data about conditions on the sea floor.

"We still really don't know what's out there, but what we do know from some work done by James Cook University is that there's ripples on the sea floor," he said.

"It looks like there's a current flowing north and we think that's the Antarctic water flowing up northwards off the coast of Australia.

"We'd really like to punch down into that and see these animals that have evolved [and] their links to Antarctica."

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