Jurassic Star, Mesobot and a State-of-the-Art Laboratory

Image courtesy of the NERC funded Deep Links Project (University of Plymouth, Oxford University, JNCC, BGS)

Jurassic Star, Mesobot and a state-of-the-art laboratory. Sound like the plot for an upcoming Hollywood blockbuster? Not quite, but it is surely the next best thing – your DOSI Deep-Sea Round-Up has arrived.

The description of a previously-unknown family of brittlestar dating back to the Jurassic period has got the echinoderm community all flustered, and the media too with enthusiastic reporting of “pig snouts” in The New York Times and deep-sea creatures “bristling with teeth” in The Conversation. And let’s face it, robots always go down well – whether they’re on a mission to hunt down life in outer space or inner space – and Mesobot is no exception. Developed by a team spanning Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), Stanford University, and the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, this midwater specialist has “the ability to survey and track slow-moving animals and to correlate the animals’ movements with critical environmental measurements”. Pretty neat.

Beyond the headlines, your support for a new deep-ocean sample processing facility is requested, as is your remote participation in a current NOAA Ocean Exploration cruise – click below for more information.

Plenty of opportunities this week, including two linked to IOC-UNESCO and the Ocean Decade, and events for your diary for the coming few weeks – don’t miss Decade WG lead Ana Hilario talking about Challenger 150. Happy reading!

CLICK FOR YOUR DEEP-SEA ROUND-UP