Nereus's mission was to undertake high-risk, high-reward research in the deepest parts of Earth's ocean where pressure on the vehicle can be as great as 16,000 pounds per square inch.
Advanced Imaging and Visualization Lab, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Bizarre Deep-Sea Reef Creatures Discovered
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Australian scientists announced on July 15, 2010 that they had discovered dozens of bizarre, ancient species while scouring the depths of the Great Barrier Reef. This ruby red beauty is the deep-sea jellyfish, Atolla, which can produce brilliant bioluminescence to ward off predators.
AFP, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Phot
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The team was on a mission to monitor ocean warming threats to marine life when they came upon these mysterious creatures hundreds of feet below the surface. Shown here is a Peraphilla, another deep-sea jellyfish.
AFP, photo courtesy of Justin Marshall. Used
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As remote-controlled cameras explored Osprey Reef, located off the far north coast of Queensland, they captured ancient sharks, giant fish and swarms of crustaceans. This incredibly creepy monster is an anglerfish, earning its name from the way it catches its prey by dangling a small growth off of its forehead.
AFP, University of Hawaii. Photo courtesy of
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The cameras used to capture these amazing images are "special low-light sensitive cameras which were custom designed to trawl the ocean floor, 1,400 meters (4,593 feet) below sea level," AFP reported. Another anglerfish, shown here, expresses its ability to produce bioluminescence. The eerie glowing lights are generated by bacteria living on the fish.
AFP, University of Hawaii. Photo courtesy of
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Lead researcher Justin Marshall from the University of Queensland told AFP, "Some of the creatures that we've seen we were sort of expecting, some of them we weren't expecting, and some of them we haven't identified yet." This glowing orb is the lobster-like, deep-sea amphipod Phronima, which produces a barrel-shaped, gelatinous home around itself.
AFP, University of Tokyo. Photo courtesy of J
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Marshall's team said they stuck a tuna fish head on the end of a stick to attract the strange creatures towards the cameras. This colorful blob is the copepod crustacean, Sapphirina. Most copepods are planktonic and can be found in both fresh water and salty sea water.
AFP, Smithsonian. Photo courtesy of Justin Ma
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Marshall said his team's research became more urgent after an oil spill in the Great Barrier Reef this year, as well as rising global ocean temperatures. This spider-like isopod appears to dance for the camera on its long, spiny legs.
AFP, photo courtesy of Justin Marshall. Used
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Deap sea viperfish "One of the things that we're trying to do by looking at the life in the deep sea is discover what's there in the first place, before we wipe it out," Marshall told AFP. This scary sea beast is not one to mess with. One of the fiercest predators of the deep, the viperfish makes the anglerfish look tame. They can grow up to a foot and have been known to prey on sharks.
AFP, University of Southern California. Photo
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Aside from pollution and runoff, the reef has been severely damaged just in the past few months. In April, a Chinese coal ship ran aground and gouged a a huge scar in the reef, and in March, hundreds of containers full of fertilizer tumbled off a Hong Kong ship and onto the reef during a storm. What look like shiny balloons sitting in a row are bioluminescent organs from a hatchetfish.
AFP, photo courtesy of Justin Marshall. Used
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The next step for Marshall's team is to take their cameras to the Gulf of Mexico in hopes of discovering how life is fairing there after the oil spill. While it may look like a futuristic space alien staring back at you, this photo shows a close-up view of the eyes of a deep-sea amphipod crustacean. WATCH VIDEO: From the legendary giant squid to thieving whales, see why these sea creatures have fascinated researchers.
AFP, photo courtesy of Justin Marshall. Used
Exploration can be a dangerous business -- even for robots. NASA has lost its share of Mars landers, and now oceanographers have lost one of their most ambitious undersea explorers.
The remotely operated vehicle, Nereus, was lost on Saturday some 6.2 miles in the ocean deep. The robotic sub was seven hours into a nine-hour dive at the deepest parts of the Kermadec Trench northeast of New Zealand when researchers lost contact with the vehicle. After failing to retrieve the sub, crew on board the research ship Thompson noticed debris from Nereus on the water's surface.
Researchers believer Nereus was destroyed during a catastrophic implosion under pressure as great as 16,000 pounds per square inch.
The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 turned up a ton of trash.
"Extreme exploration of this kind is never without risk, and the unfortunate loss of Nereus only underscores the difficulty of working at such immense depths and pressures," WHOI Director of Research Larry Madin said in a statement.
Although it appears to have met a violent end, Nereus (named after the mythical Greek god with a fish tail and a man's torso) had logged some valuable dives during its 6-year lifespan.
The cutting edge sub was built in 2008 by the Deep Submergence Lab at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) with primary funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). The $8 million-dollar vehicle was equipped to dive to the deepest parts of the ocean and operate either on its own or be controlled via tether from the surface. It also traveled with a healthy power supply -- carrying packs of 2,000 rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, similar to those powering laptop computers.
On its first mission, Nereus (rhymes with "serious"), explored the deepest part of the ocean, Challenger Deep -- a nearly 7-mile-deep trench east of the Marianas Islands in the western Pacific. The trench extends deeper below the sea surface than Mount Everest reaches into the sky. Nereus not only reached these record depths, but also returned specimens of animals from the deep that had been previously unknown to science.
On other missions the sub reached the deepest known hydrothermal vents along the Cayman Rise in the Caribbean. It was due to return to the Mariana Trench in November.
" Nereus helped us explore places we've never seen before and ask questions we never thought to ask," Timothy Shank, a WHOI biologist who also helped conceive the vehicle, said in a press release. "It was a one-of-a-kind vehicle that even during its brief life, brought us amazing insights into the unexplored deep ocean"
Where Nereus left off, other undersea vehicles will have much left to explore -- an estimated 90 percent of the ocean floor remains to be charted.