Say What? The underwater world is still such an unknown frontier. We continually are discovering new species and learning new things about life in the depths of the oceans. In fact, species once thought extinct are sometimes found to still be in existence. As our scientific technology expands and matures, our ability to explore the depths of the sea grows with it. While I was on the ship I was treated to a tour of the Yo-Yo Camera by Sheldon Blackman. Sheldon calls it a 'yo yo cam' because it literally bounces along as the ship moves forward. He works on the Laurence M. Gould and the Nathaniel B. Palmer as an Electronics Technician (ET, not to be confused with extraterrestrial). He and Kevin, whom you saw in an earlier blog, do an amazing job!
Meet Sheldon Blackman. He's guiding the tour today. Well I am, but I got all of my info from him.
So hold on to your hats - this is some cool technology. The camera is designed to be lowered down near the seafloor. Because it goes so deep where the pressure is high, it needs this special casing.
This is the housing for the camera to protect it from seawater and impact as it hits the ocean floor.
You can see the rubber prongs on the housing. As the camera is lowered, the prongs hit the seafloor and trigger the camera to take a picture. The strobe on the frame holding the camera also goes off to provide light - hey, it's dark down there.
Sheldon is explaining how this works. Notice the rubber prongs on the top (which is actually the bottom) of the housing. These make contact with the seafloor and trigger the camera to take a picture. Voila!
The camera is inserted here and then sealed. The cover is made of high pressure optical glass. The deeper you go underwater the higher the pressure gets. Why is that?
The cameras that go in the housings can vary quite a bit. They have a new one that have a 16.2 million pixel sensor, which means about 16 megapixels (mp). Look at your cell phone camera. It is probably around 1-3mp. 8mp on a camera will give you pretty good pictures. Anyway, the rubber prongs hit the bottom signaling the camera and the strobe to go off. The lasers dots in the picture give the viewer a frame of reference. How? Well, those two dots are exactly 4cm apart. So using that, the viewer can gauge how big the object in the picture is provided it is in the foreground. Very cool stuff. This frame was hand built as you can see. You can buy real fancy, expensive ones of varying types.
There are two laser sensors on the frame. These lasers are carefully place exactly 4cm apart which gives you a frame of reference as to the size of the objects being photographed.
This is the frame that will carry the Yo Yo Cam. The white arrow is pointing to where weights can be added. The yellow arrow shows you where the strobe light it located. And yes, I added those arrows all by myself. Bet you didn't realize I was so talented.
Looks like this one will be just fine. I have no idea if it will be operating at any point when I'm on the Gould, but if it is you can be sure I'll post some pictures up here.
This is just a really cute picture I took yesterday. You should know by now it's a fur seal.
No, this wasn't taken by the Yo Yo Cam. I took this. I'm not really obsessed with fur seals, it's just that we haven't seen much else at Palmer Station recently. I'm hoping to get out in the zodiac boats when the weather clears up and discover a variety of animals that call this place home. Until then, you are stuck with this little fellow.