BEST OF OCEANS AT MIT/ Best of Oceans at MIT, Featured Stories
OCEANS AT MIT/ Slow-Motion Science and the Art of Capturing Marine Life
THE SCUTTLEFISH/ An Exhibit of Undersea Phenomena in Ultra-Slow Motion
DIVE INFO/ New MIT Exhibit Features High-Speed Underwater Photography
BOSTON.COM/ Art-Science Underwater Photography Exhibit Opening
BIG RED & SHINY/ Unique Slow-Motion Underwater Photography Exhibit 
@ARTSATMIT TWITTER/ Join @mitmeche alumna Grace Young this Friday
BOSTON ARTISTS BLOG/ Undersea Phenomena in Ultra-Slow Motion
SCOOP (REPOSTED) / Slow-Motion Science and the Art of Capturing Marine Life 

Event listed at Boston.com:  http://www.boston.com/entertainment/events?p1=menu_entertainment_more_events_hp#/event/3727057?location=02108-boston&sections=all&date=today

Reception Sponsors: 

(Waggoner Chocolates is catering!)

"Thanks to a couple of engineers at MIT, we were able to use a prototype camera called the Edgertronic to capture slow-motion video... And that particular camera gives us an insight into what fairly common animals do but we can't even see it in the blink of an eye. ... It gives us an insight into some of the animals that we were sitting right next to for 31 days and never normally would have paid attention to, such as hermit crabs."

"Using a cutting-edge piece of technology that's not really meant for the oceans is not always easy. We sometimes had to put the camera upside down, cordon it back to the lab, and actually man the trigger from the lab itself. But what this gives us is the foresight to look at and analyze in scientific and engineering terms some of the most amazing behavior that the human eye just can't pick up, such as this manta shrimp trying to catch its prey, within about .3 seconds. That punch is as strong as a .22 caliber bullet, and if you ever try to catch a bullet in mid-flight with your eye, impossible. But now we can see things such as these Christmas tree worms pulling in and fanning out in a way that the eye just can't capture, or in this case, a fish throwing up grains of sand. This is an actual sailfin goby, and if you look at it in real time, it actually doesn't even show its fanning motion because it's so quick."

Fabien summarizes the mission's goals and accomplishments, and stresses the need for further exploration of the oceans. 

For more info, check out my previous posts about working with the Edgertronic. 

I'm also excited to say my KickStarter campaign to fund an exhibit of the underwater slow motion photography we shot on the Edgertronic from Mission 31 was a great success! Those near Boston are welcome to attend the opening on the evening of January 4th in MIT's Wiesner Art Gallery. Just shoot me a message for the details. 

Thank you everybody! The KickStarter campaign was successfully funded! The exhibit will open January 4th in Cambridge, MA at the Wiesner Art Gallery, and the reception will be the night of the 9th. Excited! 

I just launched a KickStarter campaign to help fund an exhibit of underwater high speed photography from Mission 31 and continued work. It'll be at the MIT Wiesner Art Gallery all of January if the campaign is successfully funded! 

Check it out (link here), and please consider attending the exhibit! 

This weekend I handed the Edgertronic high speed camera and it's underwater housing to MIT physics Professor Allan Adams, for him to use on his dive trip to Crete. We're skeptical about how much he can film with limited dive time, but it's worth trying to get some good footage! 

What are currently doing on Mission 31? Here's a behind-the-scenes video diary of some of our work. We are using cutting edge technology to view ocean life like never before.  We need to be fully saturated to capture these images at this depth because of the length of time required for set-up and filming in the ocean.  Living at the same atmospheric pressure as the surrounding sea is a huge advantage that allows us to spend unlimited time working in the ocean. So, the research we're doing this month would take months or even years to accomplish with surface dives. That's one reason Mission 31 is so important and unique.

Read more at:

• The Underwater World Through Doc Edgerton's Eye's about this amazing camera and its capabilities.
  
• Edgertronic High-Speed Camera Testing:  In May at MIT, I was working both on exams and the Edgertronic testing for Mission 31 at the same time!

The Edgertronic high-speed camera we are using on Mission 31 has never been used underwater. It just came out five weeks ago, and the underwater housing that Sexton Corporation customized for us (for the camera) arrived the eve of Liz and my Aquarius splashdown. 

On land, MIT's "Doc" Edgerton revolutionized how we view motion. His iconic image of a milk drop, for example, shows the coronet-shaped structure formed the instant a drop hits liquid. It's fascinating that we “see” this seemly mundane phenomenon daily, yet its true majesty is never visible to the naked eye without the incredible speed of a camera to take images at fractions of a second. 

Back in the 1950s, Jacques Cousteau and Doc Edgerton ("Papa Flash," as Cousteau called him) were fast friends. Jacques was the intrepid explorer and Edgerton the MIT tech whiz who developed special technologies that helped locate, capture and convey the glory of Jacques’ underwater discoveries. Now in 2014, the 50th anniversary of Jacques Cousteau’s Conshelf II underwater habitat expidition, the legacies of these two great pioneers are united once again on Mission 31 to hopefully convey some of the wonders we're still discovering undersea by testing the limits of new underwater imaging technology. 

Our work with the Edgertronic camera on Mission 31 is capturing motion previously observed, but never fully visible, similar to the milk drop coronet phenomenon. Depending on the chosen resolution, this camera is capable of 500 frames per second at high resolution, and 18,000 (eighteen thousand!) frames per second at its lowest resolution. We're attempting to capture behaviors of undersea life with this incredible technology, and hope to ultimately capture the unique feeding behavior of the Goliath grouper (video not captured with Edgertronic).

The camera is tricky to use underwater. Adequate lighting is critical for the camera because the shutter is only open for fractions of a second, and good lighting is scarce to nonexistent undersea. In addition, setup takes about a half hour of sea time, and then another of hour of shooting time with someone providing computerized feedback from the dry habitat. (Liz wrote a blog post about the set-up process required.) We could really use more time!

The videos we are capturing are amazing. We are seeing the super-fast movements of sea creatures on a whole new time scale, movements that are impossible to comprehend with the naked eye. It’s mind-blowing to me to see nature working at this level. Several days ago I posted a short video of a yellow-headed jawfish and Liz posted a video of a manits shrimp striking a goby. Hopefully we'll post more in the coming days. Someday, I'd love to frame these images and put them with the videos in a museum: The Underwater World through Edgerton's Eyes.

Update 6/28/14: Here's a video from Mission 31 about our work with the camera underwater.

More blog at: 

• What's Mission 31 About? This is Worth the Watch and 
  
• Stunning Views of  Life in the Sea, which shows some behind the scenes photos of setting up work with the Edgertronic camera. 
  

I'm so excited I can hardly sleep ... today was incredible! We did so many things. We collected samples of plankton from the traps that we left out overnight, swam with three plankton tows, filmed three scenes for the documentary, set up the nighttime plankton traps and then, the highlight of my day, spent a few hours in the water capturing the stunning behavior of sea creatures in slow-motion with the Edgertronic camera. This is the first time this ultra high-speed camera has been used underwater, and It's amazing what we're able to see through the lens of this camera. We're learning things about animals' behaviors we never knew before!

We are filming with a monochrome camera because it's more light sensitive than it's color counterpart, and in high-speed photography in general (and underwater in particular) we are hard-pressed for light. Visible light just doesn't travel well underwater. However, Edgertronic loaned us a color camera, and it arrived today! Let's see if we can get it to work underwater! 

I also posted this great video, Aquanauts Switch Mid-Mission from the Mission 31 production team showing Liz, Matt and I trading places with Adam, Andy and Kip to become fully- saturated aquanuts on the mission four days ago! 

With the Edgertronic ultra high-speed camera, we can see things that happen in the blink of an eye in slow motion. It's like seeing the world at a different time-warp. It lets us see the underwater world, and it's creatures, a whole new way. Today we spend 6 hours total in the water, and we focused on exploring with the Edgertronic camera. We captured some stunning footage. Here's a video of bubbles coming from Liz's helmet, captured at 1000 frames per second. 

It's just amazing what you can discover, spending six hours in the water! Who knew bubbles moved so strangely like that? We also captured many videos of sea life, including coral cups feeding, crabs dancing (what are they doing?!), a sergeant major fanning it's eggs, and even a little zooplankton narrowly avoiding being eaten by a coral polyp. The other videos need some post-processing, but I'll distribute as soon as they're out.  (And I'll post this video in a more accessible format when the internet is stronger tomorrow.)

While Fabien and Ryan re-configured the camera for us inside the habitat, we had some time to play in the water. Here I'm performing some ballet (a grand pas de chat).  Matt (second photo) did a handstand. 

Fellow aquanaut Matt Ferraro, a filmmaker with over 15 years in film production, has some more great footage of us working today, but you'll have to wait for that to come out in the documentary film!  

I wish I had time to process (and finish downloading) the footage now to post, but I need to sleep. Tomorrow is another early morning dive. We'll spend most of the day collecting plankton samples, identifying sponges for the Ocean Genome Project, and welcoming former aquanauts Mark Patterson and Steven Price back into Aquarius. 

What a day! We came in from our last dive not too long ago (been in the ocean for many hours today researching!), had dinner, prepared tomorrow's dive plan, and now we need to sleep! I'll post a lengthier update when I can.  Meanwhile, here's a video we recorded today with the Edgertronic camera. It shows a Christmas tree worm (Spirobranchus giganteus) closing at 1500 frames per second. The camera is inside a housing from The Sexton Corporation that so far is working beautifully.  

I also posted:  What's Mission 31 About? This is Worth the Watch today. 

I woke up at 5:30am to organize gear going down to Aquarius, both my personal items and research equipment, and put together all the things that will stay at mission headquarters. It was a night of little sleep. Last night I was up late with the Edgertronic high speed camera we'll use for research. The underwater housing for the camera, from the Sexton Corporation, arrived yesterday and in the day's chaos I didn't have a chance to play with it until after dinner in the Aquarius habitat. 

 Just to be sure, I inspected the case for any possible damages from shipping. I had packed supplies for greasing the o-ring seals on the case. In addition, the housing had to be disassembled prior to being loaded into the pressurization pods down to Aquarius because otherwise I wouldn't be able to open the housing inside Aquarius; the air pockets inside would have remained at 1 atmosphere, while the outside of the case would be at Aquarius's 2.5 atmospheres.  (This is also one of the big differences between being in a submarine, which generally remains at a regular atmospheric pressure, and Aquarius, currently the world's only undersea research lab, where we've saturated to the surrounding ocean's pressure and therefore can spend extended time outside the habitat conducting ocean research.) 

As I'm writing this, I'm sitting at the Aquarius kitchen table. Dozens of fish swim by the window at by my side. It's unreal, like one of those visually-addicting screen savers. I'm torn between just watching them, and reflecting on the day. Briefly, today was busy; after getting situated in Aquarius, we made our dive plan then executed a 3.5 hour saturation dive setting up plankton traps, finding sponges, and observing fish. Northeastern divers met us in the water this afternoon to deliver some equipment. Specifically, we deployed a dozen plankton traps for Amanda's zooplankton research, and carefully recorded each location. We also collected the last of the environmental contamination sensors, and attempted to use a CTD cast (more about that later... when it's working). Finally, in our dive helmets we joined Fabien (from inside the habitat) on a Skype call with Northeastern University. How cool is that?! That's the longest dive I've ever done. Tomorrow I'll discuss more details on the research. 

After the long dive, I worked with our resident expert photographer Matt on the Edgertronic camera.

Here's a fun fact. Three of the six aquanauts in Aquarius right now are left-handed! That's statistically pretty crazy. Guess who... 

Right now I'm excited for ...

• World Oceans Day, which is Sunday
• The Edgertronic high-speed camera arriving with its new waterproof housing from Sexton Corporation next week (Doc Edgerton)
  
• Ian Sommerhalder visiting tomorrow (Ian's foundation)
• Dinner with Sylvia Earle and Jean-Michel Cousteau (tonight!)

Read more Grace Under Pressure at Aquarius Day 4: Science and Ballet Arts Undersea. 

Back on the dive boat, the aquanauts took turns operating the air supply box and talking with the diver in the water over the communications line. I really enjoyed being on the radio; it's fun to hear divers describe what they are seeing. 

Our gear from Oceanic arrived yesterday screen printed with the Mission 31 logo, so today we all wore matching fins, wetsuits, and booties. We looked like a team! More photos of the team gear to come. Also, more videos to come! Back at the house, the Bonnet Rouge team continued to edit footage from today. 

Here's a quick clip of my descent to Aquarius (with director's commentary), filmed by the Bonnet Rouge crew on the RED camera. The team is still hard at work editing footage from today.

I've also uploaded a video (below) that we took yesterday with the Edgertronic high-speed camera. Sam, our Mission 31 mascot, proved a fascinating subject. We filmed her lapping up milk in the video below,at 700 frames per second. Who knew dogs tongues worked that way? Only after watching the video did I realize that their tongues curl backwards, forming a ladle shape when lapping up milk! 

Right now the plan is to tether the camera (via it's underwater housing) to the habitat for power and ethernet connection. But it's also possible to power the camera with batteries inside the case, and maybe connect the camera to a small screen inside the housing. I saw Eric Cheng do essentially this with an iPad and wireless router. I wonder if I could plug the camera's Ethernet into a Nokia smart phone via an adapter that went to the phone's miniUSB.

Tomorrow we'll dive back to Aquarius in the helmets and take a peak inside the habitat. After this week we should all be comfortable in the helmets and know what to do in the unlikely event that something goes wrong. I'm also working on adjusting the weights I use to dive in this gear. When diving you need extra weights to overcome your body's neutrally buoyant to reach the bottom. Fine-tuning how much weight to add is mostly a trial-and-error process. Today, to compensate for the 5mm wetsuit and new gear, I added 10-lb weights and sunk like a rock. Tomorrow I'll try 6 lbs. I can't wait to spend more time around the habitat. 

I'm exhausted.  Good night -- off to bed.

At the MIT Edgerton Center, Jim Bales, Kyle Hounsell and I tested the Edgertronic high-speed camera again. My goal was to become as comfortable with the camera as possible on-land before taking it underwater. It was my last chance to meet with the Edgerton Center experts again before heading to Mission 31 training this weekend! Also, an MIT videographer, John Freidah, filmed us working for a video he's doing on the Mission. We captured some beautiful footage of a candle flickering and water droplet, the kind of subjects "Doc" Edgerton recorded. One reason we're so excited about the Edgerton-Mission 31 connection is that Doc Edgerton worked closely with Jacques Cousteau on underwater photography. I'm still working on the underwater video camera casing for Mission 31.

Check out how different the phenomenon looks filmed with a standard camera below compared to the Edgertronic videos above.