A recent Schmidt Ocean Institute expedition off the coast of Uruguay discovered at least 30 suspected new species and explored a sunken warship. An octopus moves around deep-sea corals at 1,612 meters (about 5,288 feet) during a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, dive near the historic HMS'Challenger's' oceanographic station 320, where the country's first coral samples were collected almost 150 years ago. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. An expedition led by a team of scientists from Uruguay discovered that the South American nation's deep-sea coral reefs are thriving and teeming with life. The reefs are primarily home to numerous species that were recently listed as vulnerable to extinction.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. The colors and light of the deep sea are on full display in these photos from The Radiant Sea: Color and Light in the Underwater World. In this dark realm, coral, shrimp, sharks, jellyfish squid, lantern fish, and more use multi-colored lights for self-defense, to lure food, communicate, and attract mates. Here are just a few of the photos in the new book celebrating these diverse sea creatures. Photos reprinted from The Radiant Sea: Color and Light in the Underwater World, published by Abrams.

The AlphaZero/MuZero (A/MZ) family of algorithms has achieved remarkable success across various challenging domains by integrating Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) with learned models. Learned models introduce epistemic uncertainty, which is caused by learning from limited data and is useful for exploration in sparse reward environments. MCTS does not account for the propagation of this uncertainty however. To address this, we introduce Epistemic MCTS (EMCTS): a theoretically motivated approach to account for the epistemic uncertainty in search and harness the search for deep exploration. In the challenging sparse-reward task of writing code in the Assembly language subleq, AZ paired with our method achieves significantly higher sample efficiency over baseline AZ. Search with EMCTS solves variations of the commonly used hard-exploration benchmark Deep Sea - which baseline A/MZ are practically unable to solve - much faster than an otherwise equivalent method that does not use search for uncertainty estimation, demonstrating significant benefits from search for epistemic uncertainty estimation.

A robotic dodecahedron can capture fragile deep-sea animals to collect tissues samples and construct three-dimensional scans of the creatures, potentially speeding up the cataloguing of the up to 66 per cent of ocean species that are yet to be described by science. Brennan Phillips at the University of Rhode Island and his colleagues developed the RAD2 sampler, designed to mount on any submersible, to collect fresh tissue samples from living animals in situ. They hope this will reveal more about the creatures than existing techniques, which typically put them under stress as they are hauled from the depths. RAD2 is a dodecahedron with an internal volume large enough to hold a basketball. It is designed to fold and unfold on command to temporarily capture creatures for closer examination, taking a small tissue sample that is preserved directly on the submersible for later genetic analysis.

Acknowledgments: The authors would like to acknowledge primary support from the National Science Foundation National Robotics Initiative which has made this research possible, additional support from NASA's PSTAR program, and in-kind support by the NOAA Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute with ship and robotic vehicle operations during 2021 Pacific Ocean demonstrations in the San Pedro Basin. The authors would also like to thank the captain and crew of the R/V Nautilus, the NUI robotic vehicle operations team, and study participants who volunteered to assist with performance testing of the SHARC and conventional robotic manipulation systems. AP would like to acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. 2141064 and the Link Foundation. Funding: National Science Foundation, National Robotics Initiative grant IIS-1830500 (RC) National Science Foundation, National Robotics Initiative grant IIS-1830660 (MW) National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Planetary Science and Technology from Analog Research grant NNX16AL08G (RC) Author contributions: Conceptualization: AFD, AP, GB, MRW, RC Methodology: AFD, AP, GB, MRW, RC Investigation: AFD, AP, GB, MRW, RC Visualization: AFD, AP, GB, RC Funding acquisition: MRW, RC Project administration: MRW, RC Supervision: MRW, RC Writing - original draft: AFD, AP, GB, MRW, RC Writing - review & editing: AFD, AP, GB, MRW, RC Competing interests: Authors declare that they have no competing interests. Data and materials availability: All data are available in the main text or the supplementary materials. NOTE: This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of the AAAS for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Science Robotics on 23 Aug 2023, DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.adi5227.

The Benthic Rover II is the size of a compact car, although it rocks fat treads, making it more like a scientific tank. That, along with the two googly-eye-like flotation devices on its front, gives it a sort of WALL-E vibe. The robot's mission: To prowl the squishy terrain in search of clues as to how the deep ocean processes carbon. That mission begins with a wild ride, 180 miles off the coast of Southern California. Completely untethered, the robot free falls for two and a half hours, landing on the abyssal plains--great stretches of what you might generously call muck.

Often, we all wonder if the Unsinkable Ship'The Titanic' could have been saved from the iceberg. Well, the answer lies with technology; if the world was capable enough to identify the turmoils and barriers in the deep sea, so many accidents, not only Titanic, wouldn't have happened. Today, our marine and navigation system has evolved. Adverse climatic conditions and all those affecting the movements in deep-sea can be identified and prevented too. But one such factor, which requires much attention, is the ice and small glaciers. Often captains and marine experts have mentioned different kinds of ice that pose a significant threat to the ships.

While all eyes were on the dramatic descent of NASA's Perseverance rover last month, a team sent a robot into another alien world, one closer to home: the deep sea. With its towering undersea mountains, dramatic geological features, and unique creatures--many of which remain mysterious--the deep sea is the last uncharted environment on Earth. Sinking any intrepid explorer into blackened waters means facing freezing temperatures and crushing pressure. Ever listened to the sound of metal creaking under pressure? Without protection, puny electronic components in a robot don't have a chance.

More than 80 percent of the world's oceans are currently unmapped, but a $7 million prize pool to explore the deep sea hopes to change that. The Ocean Discovery XPrize was today awarded to teams using uncrewed deep-sea vehicles to map the ocean floor and trace chemical signals underwater. The goal is to develop a comprehensive atlas by 2030. The grand prize required entrants to develop an autonomous vessel capable of mapping at least 250 square kilometres of the sea floor within 24 hours, up to a depth of 4 kilometres below surface level. The maps must be fairly high resolution, with data points taken no more than five metres apart.

Don't be surprised if you soon see VR video from some of the darker corners of the ocean. Marine Imaging Technologies has launched a new camera, the Hydrus VR, that promises 360-degree 8K video (higher-resolution than many current headsets) at depths of up to 984 feet, even in lighting conditions as dim as 0.004 lux. The 10-camera array takes advantage of new ultra-sensitive Sony sensors to capture video at up to ISO 409,600 -- the result will be noisy, but might be the key to spotting an elusive fish hiding in a cave. The system is also helpful for undersea movie makers willing to wait to get the perfect shot. It normally has enough battery power and storage to record two hours of footage, but a subsea control module can extend that capture time to eight hours. You can integrate it with robotic vehicles to keep humans far away from the action.