Un­der Wa­ter

The mi­cro­pro­filer is built for use on the sea­floor. There, the device meas­ures the geo­chem­istry of the wa­ter and the sea­floor. For ex­ample, the con­cen­tra­tion of oxy­gen, sul­phur, or cal­cium. It also meas­ures para­met­ers such as the pH value and the tem­per­at­ure. The mi­cro­pro­filer col­lects data via mi­cro­sensors that it care­fully in­serts into the sea­floor. The device works non-in­vas­ively and does not take wa­ter or floor samples. More…

On the sea­floor, the in­ter­face between floor and wa­ter is one of the most im­port­ant trans­ition areas for the ex­change of dis­solved sub­stances. A benthic cham­ber al­lows on-site meas­ure­ments of the ex­change rates (e.g. of oxy­gen, meth­ane, and nu­tri­ents) between the floor and the wa­ter column. More…

Deep-sea crawl­ers are re­mote-con­trolled crawler type vehicles in­ten­ded for use in the deep sea. These are car­rier vehicles to which vari­ous devices or sensor sys­tems (e.g. the mi­cro­pro­filer) can be at­tached. Crawl­ers are used for long-term ob­ser­va­tions and meas­ure­ments on the sea­floor and can be op­er­ated main­ten­ance-free for up to one year. For the Max Planck In­sti­tute for Mar­ine Mi­cro­bi­o­logy, the Tramper crawler is par­tic­u­larly rel­ev­ant. The con­trol of the meas­ur­ing elec­tron­ics and the data col­lec­tion of the Tramper are based on de­vel­op­ments of the local elec­tron­ics work­shop. Over 12 months, the de­vel­op­ment en­gin­eers were busy build­ing this com­plic­ated sys­tem in col­lab­or­a­tion with col­leagues from the AWI team. The benthic cham­bers are mainly used by the HGF MPG joint research group for deep-sea ecology and technology.

 Further information is available on the AWI website

Lance-A-Lot is an benthic ob­ser­vat­ory that op­er­ates autonom­ously and per­forms a series of com­plex tasks. The sys­tem was de­veloped to un­der­stand the dy­namic in­ter­ac­tion of bot­tom wa­ter cur­rents, sed­i­ment trans­port and benthic ex­change pro­cesses. More...

A lander is an un­manned re­search device which is used in mar­ine re­search. Lander are mostly autonom­ous car­rier sys­tems. At­tached to them is vari­ous re­search equip­ment and their task is to bring these devices to the re­search area on the sea­floor and also back up again. More...

The idea be­hind this device is the in situ in­cu­ba­ti­on of iso­to­pe-la­be­led sub­stra­tes in the meso- and ba­t­hy­pel­agic oce­an ins­tead of con­duc­ting in­cu­ba­ti­ons on deck of a ship. The ap­proach could help to mi­ni­mi­ze de­com­pres­si­on ar­ti­facts du­ring in­cu­ba­ti­on and the­r­e­by lea­ding to ove­r­e­sti­ma­ted turn-over ra­tes of car­bon and ni­tro­gen com­pounds. More...