ROV workshop at SAMS. What's an ROV I hear you say? Read here to find out!

October, 2015...the first time I met Ben! We were doing our pre-deployment training at Plymouth University with BAS and this was the first day we had met but also the first day that he tested out his remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Deep-sea trekker off the Uni pontoon.

 An ROV is an unoccupied underwater robot that is connected to a ship by a series of cables. These cables transmit command and control signals between the operator and the ROV, allowing remote navigation of the vehicle.

Ben, myself and Emily Davey made up the 2016 wintering team at Rothera. We had such a great time and the times when we were helping Ben drive the ROV either by being his tender (watching where the line was going and if there was too much slack/tension), driving the boat or generally helping him faff!

As you can see sometimes the faffing and the cold was too much for anyone to handle haha.

Then 2 years after we had finished from BAS I organised 3 days in the first week of February, now a PhD student. Ben (Robinson) now from BAS and NOC helped me to plan and coordinate the first ROV workshop run at SAMS. It was funded by the research areas internal funding. We managed to cram lots into the 3 days.

I kicked off the workshop with an introduction to ROVs!

The basics:

The PUV (Programmed Underwater Vehicle) was a torpedo developed by Luppis-Whitehead Automobile in Austria in 1864.

However, the first tethered ROV, named POODLE, was developed by Dimitri Rebikoff in 1953.

The US Navy funded most of the early ROV technology development in the 1960s and created the capability to perform deep-sea rescue operation and recover objects from the ocean floor, such as a nuclear bomb lost in the Mediterranean Sea after the 1966 Palomares B-52 crash!!! So cool.

 Euan Mackenzie kindly let us use his SAMS/Bryden Centre ROV Deep Sea Trekker which Ben modified with a claw, headset, and scoop. 

We built up the workshop from a lecture on the first morning to explain the basics of ROVs where there was a big staff and student attendance.

We practised driving the ROV in the MRF tank with the task to pick up a mug and an octopus. 

The second day then progressed into survey design and we split people into groups to plan and conduct a survey from the back of Seol Mara at the pontoon.

 On the last day, we gave people the chance to drive the ROV from the RIB Uisge to pull the workshop together we asked them to conduct a transect photo survey along the seafloor. 

We sent out a survey at the end of the week to get feedback. Most people felt that after the workshop they understood more about ROVs, have the basics of driving the deep sea trekker and also felt they could plan an ROV survey with a bit more research. So I think we can say it was a success and maybe we should plan another one!!