A Fiber Optic Camera Undersea System

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This ocean sciences instrumentation development project will design and construct a light weight, cost-effective, and maneuverable deep sea television system. It will provide ocean scientists with real-time, digital color video with very high resolution in depths to 6,000 meters. Its size, weight, and reliability will make it usable from ships of opportunity without a complex support system. The key development to this system's relatively small size is a new electro-optic cable. Existing deep-sea camera systems require a thick cable to provide mechanical strength and to deliver required electrical power to the deep ocean. The newly designed cable will be only 9.5 mm in diameter, thereby reducing much of the weight and complexity of larger systems. The cable will also have much greater bandwidth than standard oceanographic cables to allow transmission of high resolution color video. The new camera system will provide enhanced capabilities for a number of seafloor research and exploration projects, several of which relate to studies of the Exclusive Economic Zone off Hawaii.