This article was taken from the January 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
What lies beneath? That's the question being asked by British Antarctic Survey researchers. They have developed a camera system to survey the polar seabed, near Adelaide Island, within the Antarctic Peninsula.
Their goal: to explore the biodiversity of the Antarctic ocean floor at depths of up to 1,000m. With a custom-built winch system and fibre-optic link, Peter Enderlein and his colleagues will be able to lower their Prosilica GiGE high-resolution camera and Aqua Vision Bowtech LED-2400 lights to glimpse the relatively unexplored Antarctic seabed. "You get areas where you suddenly find a huge number of different species in a very concentrated space," says Enderlein. "It would be exciting if we hit one of these."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
