Original title: Unmanned submersible "Sea Dragon III" dived 3 times in 4 days and captured a bunch of "treasures"
Peninsula reporter Han Xiaowei
On April 11, Peninsula reporters learned from the First Institute of Oceanography of the Ministry of Natural Resources that the unmanned submersible "Hailong III", which is currently carrying out environmental investigation diving missions, has dived three times in four days, collecting a variety of "peculiar" animals, including Aegis giant Peto snail, Indian Ocean new tea lotus, scaly-footed snail and so on.
At 01:00 a.m. local time on April 9, the "Ocean One" ship that was carrying out the Chinese Ocean 52 voyage mission approved by the Ministry of Natural Resources, the 6000-meter survey sampling unmanned remote control submersible (ROV) independently developed by China successfully completed the diving task of this station in the middle ridge of the Indian Ocean, with a total of 3 dives in 4 days, and the longest continuous near-bottom observation operation was 6 hours, collecting a variety of samples of large benthic animals, clean seawater, benthic fish, deep-sea sediments and so on. A variety of in situ parameter measurements were performed.
Indian Ocean New Tea Lotus
The "Hailong III" ROV is a new generation of localization, high-power, operational underwater unmanned remote control submersible supported by the Oceanic Association and developed by the team of Professor Ge Tong of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which is especially suitable for deep-sea scientific expeditions. "Sea Dragon III" has two major advantages: one is that it can achieve large-span, long-distance near-bottom observation and sampling; second, it has the ability to fix and refine operations. In this section, with the cooperation of the mother ship "Dayang I", the "Hailong III" carried a variety of independently developed monitoring probes and sampling equipment to complete the multi-parameter test in the hydrothermal area, fixed-point sampling, marker release, linkage between the mother ship and ROV, long-distance observation near the bottom, photography and video and other functional target tasks underwater.
Lepidoptera
According to Professor Ge Tong, chief designer of the Hailong system, in order to complete this task, the ROV was professionally upgraded and transformed for the equipment before the voyage, equipped with a variety of sampling devices such as domestic laser Raman, CTD sensor group, micro electrode, large-capacity clean water intake, temperature probe and macroscopic biological sampler, etc. Underwater weight of about 350 kg, more than 20 kinds of interface types, the operation process involves biological observation, photography, video recording, clean water sample collection, intubation sediment sampling, rock, sulfide sampling, etc. as well as biological sampling, etc. The team also sent a field equipment transformation and upgrading team with Wang Xuyang as the person in charge to adjust the equipment function in time according to the actual complex sea conditions, which greatly improved the on-site operation capability.
Aegis giant Peto snail
Sun Chengjun, chief scientist of the third section of China Ocean 52 voyage, said that the current performance status of "Sea Dragon III" is stable, the operation mode is flexible, the sampling means are rich, the body control is skilled, and it can operate underwater for a long time, and the collected samples are of great significance for building an environmental baseline and improving the understanding of the mid-ridge ecosystem in the Indian Ocean.