Do you like a planet that hasn't yet melted? Then you're secretly in love with plankton, tiny marine organisms that float around at the mercy of currents. They sequester carbon dioxide and provide two thirds of the oxygen in our atmosphere and sacrifice themselves as baby food for the young fish that eventually end up on your plate. Yet science knows little about the complex dynamics of plankton on ocean-wide scales. So researchers are asking the machines for help, developing clever robots that use AI to examine and classify plankton, the pivotal organisms at the base of our oceanic food chain.

Wave-powered drones are being used to provide live tracking of the world's largest fish, the whale shark, for the first time. Researchers at the Whale Shark and Oceanic Research Center (WSORC) on the island of Utila, Honduras, have just finished a year-long project using autonomous "Wave Glider" drones to patrol for whale sharks and report back on their movements. The team was able to follow along in real-time as the drones relayed the depth and minute-by-minute position of individual sharks. They found whale sharks feeding off the coast of Utila at unexpected times of year, which shows the potential for this technology to fill some significant gaps in our understanding about the endangered species. Konrad Madej, former research director at WSORC and lead researcher on the Wave Glider project, says the drones spotted one shark at a depth of 90 metres in July, when it was thought the whale sharks had migrated north toward Mexico.

This fall, an unusual vessel will begin sea trials off the coast of California. The 51-foot-long Boeing Echo Voyager will have no crew. It will glide underwater for days or weeks, quietly collecting data from the ocean floor to send back to crews on ships or on land. Ever since the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, the U.S. military has relied more and more on flying drones to take on dangerous air missions. But increasingly, drones are taking to the sea as well.

This fall, an unusual vessel will begin sea trials off the coast of California. The 51-foot-long Boeing Echo Voyager will have no crew. It will glide underwater for days or weeks, quietly collecting data from the ocean floor to send back to crews on ships or on land. Ever since the start of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, the U.S. military has relied more and more on flying drones to take on dangerous air missions. But increasingly, drones are taking to the sea as well.