ClapwayTV is featuring an unlikely adventurer today. You don’t have to have 2 legs, 2 eyes, a nose, and reproductive organs to go on an adventure, all you need is devotion to exploration and a tale of adventure to prove it (and it just so happens that today’s adventurer has 4 legs, 6 eyes, and a nose, beating us out by quite a bit, but logically no reproductive organs). For that’s how a particular REMUS (Remote Environmental Monitoring UnitS), a deep ocean unmanned vehicle, has proven itself to be a true adventurer, and it doesn’t just have a story to prove its adventure, it has the battle scars.
The men and women at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, each one of them true adventurers themselves, have been testing out REMUS as a shark cam. Most divers wouldn’t go near a shark unless they were in the protection of a cage built for such an adventure, but the REMUS torpedoes ahead nose first right into the action. What it has seen has added greatly to what we know about sharks, especially in their hunting techniques, territoriality, and migration paths and patterns (thus far only in Cape Cod and Mexico, but hopefully soon the REMUS will be deployed in every known shark spot around the world).
While the REMUS is just an innocent fellow in the shape of a torpedo, sharks still can’t help but be suspect of what it is and what it wants, and a few can’t help but see if they can’t chomp down on it and see if it tastes good. Either the REMUS just isn’t all that tasty or the sharks realize it’s not a funny looking seal, because after a few attempted gnaws, they give up on their prey; unlike your dog, which probably chews repeatedly on anything hard until it’s entirely scuffed or tattered to bits.
Despite the REMUS being built tough as nails, the shark bites have left some hefty damage. Huge scars from the sharks’ rigid teeth have cut into its metal hull, pounding in damage that a boat or directly applied chisel couldn’t match. Check out this video to see the action for yourself.
The REMUS may not be human, and you might argue that it doesn’t have a brain or certainly not one that has the ability to protest chasing sharks in the first place, but if you chase sharks for a living, than you’re an adventurer in my book.
