Cool for oceanographers—but I’m not sure who the headline writer thinks “everyone“ is.

By far most everyone does not have the disposable income to spend exploring the deep ocean, no matter how relatively affordable this is.

The one thing this article completely misses is: This just completely changed the Search and Rescue world!!!

Right now it cost about $20k to get a sonar device that is useful for searching lakes for missing people. Even once you buy the device, trying to use the darn things are time consuming and complex. You need to do some hands on training before you can even deploy the equipment.

This would allow any SAR team to have a device of searching bodies of water!!! This is a major game changer

>Deep-sea exploration has long been largely a privilege of billionaires, fossil fuel companies, and a select few scientists from wealthy nations. This exclusivity has left the vast majority of the deep sea unexplored, its natural wonders understudied and vulnerable to exploitation. In recent years, scientists and conservationists have called for the democratization of the deep sea. They say this extreme region of the planet needs to be accessible to everyone. Now, a group of scientists, conservationists, and explorers has devised a low-cost device that is helping bring that goal closer to reality.

>Called the Maka Niu, which means “coconut eye” in Hawaiian, the device was initially created by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is now being developed by the nonprofit Ocean Discovery League. Looking like little more than a piece of PVC pipe stuffed with gadgets, the compact, customizable, and relatively inexpensive battery-powered data collector can capture video and measure depth, temperature, and salinity at depths as great as 1,500 meters. That’s about five times deeper than even the most specially trained scuba diver can go and deep enough to reach the ocean’s midnight zone, home to deep-sea animals like the vampire squid and chambered nautilus.

>A newer version of the Maka Niu can go even deeper says Katy Croff Bell, the deep-sea explorer, scientist, founder of the Ocean Discovery League, and leader of the MIT team. “We have designs that can go to 6,000 meters, which would enable it to reach 99 percent of the seafloor,” she says.

Perhaps a trade off of accessibility to the deep sea for all would be an increase in pollution and waste down there (not like we haven’t done that already to our oceans).

Ok... If it's about access then why isn't the design open source and accessible? I've been searching for the build plans and I've yet to find them.

Here's what I can tell reading the article...

Not particularly revolutionary, tech-wise. It's a low-cost solution, after all, not a new advancement. But the idea is pretty decent for giving access to hobbyists.

This gadget is not the camera or sensors or whatever else, those are old tech. What it is really is is a pressure-resistant housing and buoyancy-control in which you can put a camera and other sensors.

You drop the device, it sinks. After a predetermined time its buoyancy system returns it to the surface (the traditional way is to drop ballast). When it hits surface I am guessing it emits signals so you can boat out there to pick it up. You retrieve it and look at your video.

Just a heads up about underwater exploration: if you want to control just about *anything* (or get video/readings while it's still down there) you need signals. This means for anything deeper than 100m or so, either you run a cable or you use acoustic signals (radio's range is terrible underwater). Either would raise costs a LOT. Because acoustic signals have a HUGE latency, it is impossible to deftly control anything with them, nor can they effectively transmit video. This is why most ROVs (Remote Operated Vehicle, an underwater drone which can be as small as a backpack to the size of a tank) instead use an umbilical cable with fiber-optics. These cables are expensive as heck, because they're kilometers-long, armored (I mean you don't want a sharp rock to slice your cables right?) and filled with power cables and fiber-optics. The winch and umbilical for very large systems can cost millions. But this is literally the only way to properly pilot a system that is kilometers deep. There's also some hybrid systems where you lower a cable with a transmitter to depth and then control the ROV using acoustic/radio signals from that transmitter.

You can bypass most of these issues if you opt not to control the device and only get your video/readings after you retrieve it. But this means you run the risk of losing your device every time you use it. A low-cost solution does kind of make this less painful, though it means you cannot put anything too expensive in it. What the Maka Niu has - camera, altimeter, thermometer, hydrometer (video, depth, temperature, salinity, in that order), they are all very cheap (cept the camera - that can cost a lot depending).

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Sariel007:

>Deep-sea exploration has long been largely a privilege of billionaires, fossil fuel companies, and a select few scientists from wealthy nations. This exclusivity has left the vast majority of the deep sea unexplored, its natural wonders understudied and vulnerable to exploitation. In recent years, scientists and conservationists have called for the democratization of the deep sea. They say this extreme region of the planet needs to be accessible to everyone. Now, a group of scientists, conservationists, and explorers has devised a low-cost device that is helping bring that goal closer to reality.

>Called the Maka Niu, which means “coconut eye” in Hawaiian, the device was initially created by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is now being developed by the nonprofit Ocean Discovery League. Looking like little more than a piece of PVC pipe stuffed with gadgets, the compact, customizable, and relatively inexpensive battery-powered data collector can capture video and measure depth, temperature, and salinity at depths as great as 1,500 meters. That’s about five times deeper than even the most specially trained scuba diver can go and deep enough to reach the ocean’s midnight zone, home to deep-sea animals like the vampire squid and chambered nautilus.

>A newer version of the Maka Niu can go even deeper says Katy Croff Bell, the deep-sea explorer, scientist, founder of the Ocean Discovery League, and leader of the MIT team. “We have designs that can go to 6,000 meters, which would enable it to reach 99 percent of the seafloor,” she says.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/ynqxce/this_lowcost_device_could_make_the_deep_sea/iva82f9/

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maybe if we can see the ocean floor we will realize that trash doesn't belong down there. unfortunately this wont solve that. however, throw on some trash/loot collection devices and you got yourself potential game-changer. i always thought it would be cool to use augmented reality to ping items

Even if true, I wouldn’t be excited about opening up yet another area for humans to ruin.

Possibly unpopular opinion: if underwater drones become popular, I worry about them becoming a nuisance to wildlife and scuba divers. One thing I love about scuba diving is that it is a community of people that is largely free of influencers and advocates for passive, respectful encounters with wildlife.

I would hate to be diving and have some drone-bro scaring off all the fish, damaging reefs, of possibly making my dive more dangerous.

Maybe it’s a hot take or maybe I’m tired of drones infiltrating all of my surface-based activities.

The language choices here. 'We are oppressed because....deep sea exploration is dangeous and expensive'.

Unleash Prince Namor on the human race.