Underwater Robot

    Scientists predict that the sea ice area around Antarctica will be reduced by more than 33 per cent by 2100, accelerating the collapse of ice shelves.  Up to hundreds of meters thick, ice shelves are floating platforms of ice that cover almost half of Antarctica's coastline.  The mission will study the effect of ice shelves on the mixing of sea water, and will provide critical data for the Antarctica 2010 Glacier Tongues and Ocean Mixing Research Project led by investigator Craig Stevens at the New Zealand National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research.  The field site is located in New Zealand's Ross Dependency in Antarctica and the team includes scientists from New Zealand, Canada, the United States and France.  Until now, it was hard to try and even go in the icy waters to do any research but that will all change due to having the robots.  The Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), named UBC-Gavia, measures 2.5 meters long by half a meter wide and is equipped with temperature and salinity sensors, current meters, mapping sonar, a digital camera and water quality optical sensors. It will navigate the deep cold waters next to, and possibly under, the floating 100-metre thick Erebus Glacier Tongue in McMurdo Sound. (Science Daily)