Robots search seafloor for new forms of life.

• Position: Deep-Sea Species - Brief article

Scientists are reporting "a significant step forward" in proving the feasibility of launching fleets of autonomous robots that search Earth's deep oceans for exotic new life forms. Their description of successful deployment of the trailblazer for such a project--an autonomous seafloor lander equipped with a mini laboratory the size of a kitchen trash can that is able to detect minute traces of DNA in the deep oceans--appears in Environmental Science & Technology.

William Ussler III, along with his colleagues at California's Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, note that exotic forms of life still may remain undiscovered around the methane vents in the deep ocean floor that already have yielded previously unknown albino crabs, bacteria that consume methane, and other organisms new to science.

However, researchers have had very limited access to the deep ocean to search for such life forms systematically. Ussler and his team set out to modify a successful shallow-water robotic laboratory, called an Environmental Sample Processor...