Ocean Shot Award Propels Discovery through Innovation

A multidisciplinary team led by scientists at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences have received funding that will expand the possibilities for discovering and describing exotic, even gelatinous, animals in the deep ocean with the next generation of ocean exploration technology.

The team represents six different institutions and will receive $2.2 million, over three years, from the Ocean Shot Research Grant Program, an initiative to encourage bold research in ocean discovery and technology through the Sasakawa Peace Foundation’s Ocean Policy Research Institute, supported by the Nippon Foundation. With the funding, they’ll continue to advance an innovative approach using cutting-edge imaging technology and underwater robotics to produce high-resolution 3D images, preserve tissue, and generate reference genomic data for new marine species. The effort will transform how scientists understand the ocean’s vast — and understudied — midwater region.

“This funding call is really visionary for taking a leap for the sake of innovation and discovery,” said Bigelow Laboratory Senior Research Scientist John Burns, the project’s principal investigator. “This opportunity will allow us to discover new species and examine existing ones in new ways in a part of the ocean that’s been largely inaccessible to scientists.”

Burns will be attending the One Ocean Science Congress, a special event of the UN Ocean Conference, in Nice, France, this June to meet with the foundation and help kick off this exciting project.

In addition to Bigelow Laboratory, the team includes experts from Harvard University, the University of Rhode Island, Baruch College, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.

The researchers represent diverse expertise in underwater imaging, robotics, taxonomy, and genetic sequencing. Together, they’ve created new tools for observing and describing even the most fragile marine animals in their natural environment, which has the potential to speed up the process for classifying new species and provides previously impossible levels of detail on an animal’s genetics, behavior, and structure.

Last year, the team described their multi-prong approach in the journal Science Advances. That study, part of the “Designing the Future” project funded by Schmidt Ocean Institute, included the first applications of the method to four animals collected during an expedition off the coast of San Diego in 2021.

“Testing this remarkable suite of technologies on board our research vessel was an exciting peek into a future where we will be able to identify marine species and understand their behavior in their natural habitat,” said Schmidt Ocean Institute Executive Director Jyotika Virmani. “This will revolutionize the way in which scientists study and understand the ocean’s inhabitants.”

With this new, substantial support, the team will transform the imaging and robotics technology, and the genetic methods, described in that original study.

On the robotics side, the team intends to reimagine their novel, origami-inspired robotic encapsulation device by outfitting it with a biopsy tool, modeled on the biology of the mantis shrimp, that can non-destructively sample gelatinous organisms floating in the water. The ultimate hope is to enable “catch and release sampling,” where they can enclose an animal in an underwater chamber and use various sensors and devices to collect tissue samples for genetic analysis before releasing the animal unharmed.

Likewise, the team is building out software to process the complex data produced by their cutting-edge imaging systems. The goal is to develop new algorithms for processing multidimensional imaging data and AI tools to automatically identify the animals they image. They will also deploy a new shadowgraph system that essentially takes pictures with shadows to capture the internal structure of the animals, which will help with taxonomic classification of new species.

The researchers are working to secure opportunities to take their new methods into the field on several expeditions to test them and collect additional samples from new areas of the ocean.

“We’re planning to go to regions of the South Atlantic and Southern oceans that people haven’t looked at closely, especially in the midwater environment, for these kinds of animals,” Burns said. “We’re almost guaranteed to find lots of new species because these areas are so understudied.”

During those research cruises, they plan to collaborate with another large, interdisciplinary team, led by researchers in Australia, Japan, and the United States. That group was also recently funded by Ocean Shot to develop new taxonomic methods for studying and classifying unknown midwater species.

“Their team is focused on novel studies of morphology and behavior of animals on the ship, while we’re trying to create these digital recreations underwater,” Burns said. “By tackling these questions from different angles, we’ll be stronger together and be able to really understand the biological diversity of this environment.”

That kind of creative, cross-border collaboration reflects the goals of the Ocean Shot Research Grant Program, which provides funding for nonprofit institutions who are pushing the frontier of discovery in the ocean.

“Ocean Shot’s approach is to get the best people together and see what we can innovate, learn, and discover in places that haven’t been well studied,” Burns said. “It’s very exciting to be a part of.”

Photo Captions:

Photo 1: John Burns, who is leading the team that just received a significant award to advance new technology for ocean discovery, fixes a device on the deep-sea submersible during the previous expedition to test and refine the technology (Credit: Brennan Phillips, University of Rhode Island).

Photo 2: A composite image of the kinds of gelatinous, fragile deep-sea animals that the new approach will enable scientists to more easily and comprehensively study (Credit: Schmidt Ocean Institute).