The Deep Ocean Dropcam: A highly deployable benthic survey tool

Abstract

The deep ocean is a dark and unforgiving place. Buried under thousands of meters of water, the deepest part, the hadal zone, experiences extraordinary pressure. This deep seafloor habitat remains largely inaccessible to many current imaging tools. An inexpensive, reliable device is needed to explore these deep places and capture imagery of marine life in situ. The Deep Ocean Dropcam, developed by the National Geographic Society, is a low-cost research tool that can probe these depths and return valuable imagery to the surface. It combines a high-definition camera and onboard lights inside a glass pressure housing to capture high quality imagery of the deep seafloor environment. This device, deployed over 200 times in the past five years, has proven to be a robust platform for exploring the deep ocean.