Recent EEL Projects

Most recent EEL projects focus either on environmental science education or applied ecological research.

C-DEBI Educational ROV Project

The Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations has funded EEL students to develop of a small fleet of ROVs optimized for middle school and high school outreach and education activities. The young scientists can use the ROVs to explore marine life from a wharf, dock, or even a kayak. Three of these vehicles will be based at the Wrigley Marine Science Field Station on Catalina Island. Three others will support educational programs in the Monterey Bay area. Each ROV features precision joystick control, lights for night dives, and high-definition video recording. Here one of the ROVs checks out a sea star under the Monterey wharf.

Squid Cam

EEL is collaborating with the Gilly Lab at Hopkins Marine Station, to develop and deploy underwater camera systems to record the mating and spawning behavior of Market Squid (Doryteuthis opalescens), which apparently breed and lay eggs in places where naturally-occurring pulses of deep hypoxic (low-oxygen) water occur and last for up to several hours. How do the squid respond? Do these low oxygen periods affect the survival of the eggs? In this photo, EEL capstone student Teresa Henry and two assistants prepare to lower the new camera system from their kayaks off shore from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Deep ROV camera test with Antipodes

In a second year of productive collaboration with the Ocean Gate Foundation, CSUMB students in Professor Moore's robotics class and EEL students were able to test their design for a new ROV camera and lighting sytem designed to operate at depths of 100 meters (about 330 feet). The camera system (metal cylinder in lower left of photo) was attached to the front of Ocean Gate's Antipodes submersible and tested during an awesome dive to the wreck of the Art Reidel. The ship's anchor, visible in the photo taken from inside Antipodes, rests on the bottom in 300 feet of water. The student's camera system test was only pertially successful, so the students learned some valuable lessons that will improve the final ROV design.

Squid Disco

Through a fabulous collaboration with the Ocean Gate Foundation, CSUMB students in Professor Moore's robotics class and EEL students got a unique opportunity to develop some remote controlled equipment for a submersible (small submarine) called Antipodes. The devices included a water sampler, a gripper arm, a flashing LED display (nicknamed "Squid Disco" by the sub pilot), and a TV remote control that could be used to control the other devices from inside the submarine. The TV remote successfully operated the Squid Disco lights during a dive to a depth of over 900 feet! The photo shows student Josh Ambrose climbing into the sub. Check out this Squid Disco article and video.

SurfBot

CSUMB students in Professor Moore's Robotics class were able to use EEL tools and expertise to build a super-fun class project. Their creation, called "Surfbot" is an autonomous (i.e., self-controlled) surfboard equipped with propellers, GPS navigation, and a modified fish finder used as a depth guage to map nearshore understea terrain. With it, the students were able to locate a sunken sailboat and a sunken amphibious military vehicle off of Del Monte Beach in Monterey. For more about this fun project, see this CSUMB news Article about SurfBot.

Wildlife Surveillance by Junior Scientists

With generous funding from the Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation, EEL has developed a set of portable, solar-powered, Internet accessible, motion-activated, wildlife surveillance cameras that can be deployed by school children for periods of 1-2 weeks in remote areas frequented by wildlife. The kids can use this equipment to answer their own questions about wildlife behaviors and habitat preferences, while learning about technology and science at the same time. For more about this fun project, visit the Candid Camera Critters project pages.

ROVing Otter

ROVing Otter is a small, undersea Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) designed and built by the EEL team to be piloted by school children over the Internet from a standard web browser. Using mouse-clickable controls, the kids can steer the vehicle through a real kelp forest while viewing live video of undersea life from the ROV's camera. Successfully piloted with funding from WeTEC and conducted in collaboration with the California State Park System, this exciting project is presently awaiting additional funding to improve its reliability and increase access to more schools.

Undersea "Weather Stations"

As part of a larger IfAME applied research project aimed at understanding rockfish habitat use, EEL is developing low-cost instruments that can be deployed in arrays on reefs (temperate or tropical) to measure and record both spatial and temporal variations in physical microhabitat conditions. Changes in conditions can then be compared with fish (or other animal) movements to test certain hypotheses about why particular reef animals are where they are at specific times.

CMS Owl Cam

CMS Owl Cam is a science education project conducted in collaboration with Mark Stromberg of Hastings Natural History Reservation and Craig Hohenberger of Carmel Middle School. Although the camera is not operating at the present time, it has archived over 100,000 still web-camera images taken at regular intervals from inside a Barn Owl nest box, mostly in 2004. Middle school students and others can access the image archives via the web and analyze the images to answer their own questions about the nesting behavior of wild Barn Owls.