Collaborative Research: An Autonomous Vertical Sampling Vehicle for Global Ocean Biogeochemical Mapping

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The PIs request funding to develop a rapid vertical profiling autonomous underwater vehicle with biogeochemical sampling capabilities. This system will add a new, and much needed, biological dimension to the GEOTRACES program, and would most likely become the central instrument for a GENOTRACES microbial and enzymes research initiative - ultimately enabling the global marine mapping of microbial DNA, RNA and proteins, including key biogeochemical enzymes. The PIs will develop a wireless water-column sampling technology: a 6000m rated autonomous vertical sampling vehicle with a high throughput sampling and sensing payload. The combinationof rapid vertical transport, the 6000 m depth range, and the need to stop at numerous target depths represents a novel and significant engineering challenge and developing a vehicle capable of this task with the sampling capacity needed for GENOTRACES "-omic" sampling is the objective of this proposal.Broader Impacts: This project leads oceanic sample collection into the future where they will need to be collected from a variety of autonomous platforms. This is of great societal importance because understanding the ocean, its sheer magnitude, and its role in global processes will require more than ships and moorings, it will take samples from many parts of the ocean and their analysis by many techniques for many different analytes. This project will also sponsor two consecutive teams of undergraduate female engineering students from Smith College's Picker Engineering Program during their senior engineering design course. This is seen as a real plus and an innovative outreach effort. The PI has very successfully done this in the past.