An AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) or ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) based search

operation typically involves several key requirements and planning steps:

1. **Mission Objective Definition**: Clearly define the purpose of the search operation, whether it's
locating a lost object, surveying the seabed, or investigating a specific area for scientific or commercial
purposes.

2. **Area of Interest (AOI) Identification**: Determine the specific area where the search will take place
based on available information such as last known location, currents, depth, and other environmental
factors.

3. **Vehicle Selection**: Choose the appropriate AUV or ROV based on factors such as depth
requirements, payload capacity, endurance, and sensor capabilities. AUVs are autonomous and operate
without direct human control, while ROVs are operated remotely by human operators via a tether.

4. **Sensor Payload Selection**: Equip the vehicle with suitable sensors for the mission, such as sonar
for mapping the seafloor, cameras for visual inspection, and other specialized sensors depending on the
objectives (e.g., magnetometers for detecting metallic objects).

5. **Mission Planning**: Develop a detailed mission plan including waypoints, search patterns (e.g., grid
search, parallel track search), and survey parameters (e.g., altitude, sensor settings) to ensure efficient
coverage of the AOI.

6. **Safety Considerations**: Assess potential risks and implement safety measures to mitigate them,
including contingency plans for equipment failure, communication loss, and emergency response
procedures.

7. **Logistics and Deployment**: Arrange logistics for transporting the AUV/ROV to the deployment
site and ensure all necessary support equipment (e.g., launch/recovery systems, power sources) are
available and operational.

8. **Communication and Control**: Establish reliable communication links between the vehicle and
control station, ensuring real-time monitoring and control of the mission progress. For AUVs, this may
involve pre-programmed mission instructions, while ROVs require direct human intervention.

9. **Data Management and Analysis**: Develop protocols for data collection, storage, and analysis to
extract relevant information from sensor readings and imagery collected during the mission.
10. **Post-Mission Evaluation**: Review mission performance against objectives, assess data quality,
and identify lessons learned for future operations.
Autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and remotely operated vehicle (ROV)
operations are now underway. Our team has developed a rhythm and the crew of
the Sir Wilfrid Laurier (SWL) is expertly handling AUV and ROV
deployments. There is an ongoing dance between the various scientific elements
of this expedition to integrate the mooring work, CTD casts, AUV mapping, and
ROV dives. With each new expedition there is a learning curve for ship crew
members, scientists, and ROV/AUV engineers. When everyone gets into the
rhythm, the dance becomes increasingly graceful.

We begin each day recovering an AUV that was deployed the previous evening.
We then quickly get on station and prepare the MiniROV for deployment. We
complete ROV operations in the afternoon or early evening, then prepare the
AUVs for another evening dive and try to fit in other science objectives such as
mooring retrieval/deployment and CTD/water-sampling casts. Things that can
alter the general outline of these plans are vehicle or component failures, bad
weather, and inadequate communication.

Today’s AUV recovery was executed flawlessly by the ship’s crew. A small boat
was used to grab and tow the AUV from its surface location to ship-based tag
lines and the crane hook. Once hooked, the small boat exits swiftly, leaving the
AUV for the ship crew to bring aboard, cradle, and tie down.

A rigid hull
inflatable boat (RHIB), driven by officer Skye, retrieves and tows the AUV back to the
CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier.
 Once the AUV is
hooked by the ship’s deck officers, the RHIB quickly backs away while the deck crew quickly
brings the AUV over the deck railing into its cradle and lashes it down.

Once cradled, the

AUV is quickly secured on deck.
After this morning’s AUV recovery, the ROV engineers readied the MiniROV for
our second dive to the 420-meter-deep mud volcano. Similar to yesterday’s dive,
we had several scientific objectives for this dive. Once the MiniROV reached the
seafloor, we deployed our second OsmoSampler, took ambient water and sub-
seafloor temperature measurements, then collected three push cores. Next we
“flew” a 400-meter-deep transect across the mud volcano to collect video for
biological analysis and to visually identify contacts between different ages
of seafloor.

The
OsmoSampler, packaged neatly in a plastic milk crate, is deployed on the seafloor at a depth of
420 meters.
While transecting, we received exciting news from Dave Caress: he had just
completed the initial processing of the data collected during the previous night’s
AUV mission and brought us the new map. It showed very clear differences in
structure from mapping efforts of just a few years prior, and our dive was in an
area of notable change. This led us to change course mid-dive to ground truth the
newly revealed structural differences. Even more exciting, the final push core that
was collected on this dive contained gas hydrate, an ice-like structure of methane
and water, which began disassociating within the core once at the surface,
creating noticeable expanding pockets of gas and visible bubbling.
 The final push-
core sample of the day contained methane hydrate, which began disassociating near the surface
and continued off-gassing in the lab during processing.