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New underwater robots help researchers study the Monterey Bay and beyond

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“The ocean is sometimes out of sight, out of mind — you just see the surface of it,” he said. “This new capability will shed light on what is happening in the ocean, not only here in Monterey, but …
The Monterey Bay is now home to robotic lab assistants which collect aquatic DNA for researchers to analyze onshore. Researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have developed a new underwater robot that collects samples of DNA floating around in the ocean. That DNA could help researchers understand the animals, plants and microbes that teem in the Monterey Bay and the ocean beyond.
“We’re finding new ways to reach these ocean ecosystems and understand how everything from microbes up to whales is responding to changes in the environment,” said Kobun Truelove, an oceanographer at MBARI who led the team. Living creatures often leave behind traces of DNA in their environment, which scientists can use to track them. The process is a lot like using forensic science to determine who was at a crime scene. “We’re extracting DNA, and then we’re matching it against this bank of suspects that we have,” said Francisco Chavez, a researcher at MBARI who worked on the project. Just like criminal databases, the list of aquatic suspects is incomplete. Scientists know how to recognize the DNA sequences for many of the usual suspects, like anchovies and krill. If those creatures have recently visited an area, they’ll come back as hits from that list of known DNA sequences.

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