The lasers are parallel....it allows for object scale to be quickly determined.
As for the corals, there are a few things that they want to do. One is collect tissue samples to do genetic analysis to determine how genetically isolated the species in the canyon are from the rest of the world. The other thing they want to do is determine the ecology of different hard corals in bodies of water with different levels of carbonic acid, which has real world implications in better understanding how our reefs globally will respond to the inevitable acidification of our waters due to increased atmospheric CO2.
There's other 5hit being done also....for starters, they may try and retrieve the underwater glider that was lost in this exam same spot years ago.
FYI: Back down again, going to 1800m.
free to let me know if I should **** off with the updates.Not really much else happening in the waters of PerthCame across this towards the very end of the dive at just over 1500m deep. It's a pity the lasers were not on, because it's a bit hard to give the images some scale. It's interesting to see how you only get macroscopic life in the areas that are not getting covered in sand/marine-snow (ie, only in the areas that are not white). It's to be expected from a theory point of view, but it's fun to see it in action.