One of the cruise participants, Deep Sea Power and Light, provided cutting-edge new camera technology and a small team of experts to commission and maintain the equipment. This is the first time this technology has been deployed to such depths anywhere in the world.
The MxD SeaCam camera works at QFHD resolution, manages RGB colors separately, has very powerful zoom capabilities, and, perhaps most importantly, has a global shutter that allows for high precision still images to be extracted from the video. All the way down to 7,000 m water depth. It is coupled with LED SeaLite LSL-1000 lights that are special high color quality versions that more faithfully reproduce natural sunlight in the subsea environment. A standard LED light will have a typical Color Rendering Index, or CRI, value of around 70, with perfect sunlight reproduction being 100. These lights have a CRI value of 90, significantly improving the color accuracy of imagery captured with the UHD MxD SeaCam.
“The results ‘speak’ for themselves,” said SBMA Knowledge Management Senior Technical Officer Rima Browne, “for those following the live stream of the cruise, it was a real treat seeing the video feed in real time. There is no doubt that our mission to identify the larger species present on the seabed in the Cook Islands has been boosted by these high-quality images. Certain species, such as deep-sea corals, need close-up images to be confidently identified from photos.”
Casper Octopus “Haunts” the Deep Sea of the Cook Islands | Nautilus Live. (Video credit: Nautilus Live)
“SBMA and most of our collaborators are united by a strong desire to develop the scientific data to support conservation within the Cook Islands Marae Moana,” said Knowledge Management Director Dr. John Parianos. “And this type of collaboration is proving to be key to providing Cook Islanders with a complete view of their Marae Moana seabed. The deep seabed is isolated and very different from the surface waters that we are familiar with.”
“An understanding of environmental state is a critical step in the structured scientific assessment of environmental impacts that is required to make decisions in the future. This assessment needs to extend to all life classes and all habitat types of the seabed, and the expected degree of recovery after any assessed impact.”
The NA176 Deep Sea Habitats of the Cook Islands research cruise is a partnership between three institutions, SBMA, OET, and NOAA. The cruise end date is on October 21, 2025, with a welcome event and public vessel tours planned at Avarua harbor the following day. A detailed cruise report will be issued to the public once the cruise is complete.
Cook Islands SBMA provided research objectives and mission support, Ocean Exploration Trust (OET; a non-profit NGO) provided vessel and operational equipment, as well as the bulk of the science team, and the United States National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) funded and helped coordinate with other participants and stakeholders via the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute (OECI). Other participants include the Cook Islands National Environment Service, Ministry of Marine Resources, Tepuna Vai Marama, United States Geological Survey, and the University of Rhode Island.