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both manual and autonomous,” Hardiman added. “Sensors fragile water environments in a very non-intrusive way.” mounted onboard send the data captured back to our web por- The need to understand the deep blue sea holds even more im- tal for customers to analyze. portance in the face of the climate crisis as humanity struggles

The WasteShark allows for different environmental sensors to protect the global environment: “The oceans are the lungs such as dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll, pH, nitrogen, salinity, of the earth and understanding them requires the gathering of conductivity and temperature, all coupled with the ability to as much data as is practical,” Childress said. “Autonomous match each data point to GPS and a timestamp.” WasteSharks vehicles, operated independent of large support vessels, can currently operates waterways in Australia, South Korea, Sin- accelerate the acquisition of that data while reducing the in- gapore, the U.S., Ireland, Denmark, Romania and South Af- dustry carbon footprint by more than an order of magnitude.” rica. The solution? Collective action on a grand scale, as pointed out on World Ocean Day. More speci? cally? Robots. What

A PUSH OF A BUTTON once seemed to be the hallmark of any futuristic, out-of-this-

Aside from ROVs and AUVs being technologically intrigu- world movie has become a reality—and an effective one at that. ing and inspiring, they’ve also become increasingly necessary “Humans have done the damage, but robots are perhaps one in the race against time to re-establish fragile marine ecosys- of the solutions to mitigate and restore that impact on our tems, understand complex processes and reverse decades of planet,” Hardiman said. “With many systems working in uni- damage, especially without further destructiveness. “Sadly, son across the planet, we will be able to tap into vast resource we shouldn’t need this kind of technology deployed in our data that can inform us to make better decisions in the future.” world at all, but it is needed,” Hardiman lamented. “We like As made clear on June 8, there’s no lack of passion towards to believe that using robots and autonomous solutions helps ocean revitalization—but this battle may be one fought by hu- reduce the impact of plastic waste and harmful algae on our mans and robots alike.

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www.blueprintsubsea.com [email protected] www.marinetechnologynews.com 27

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