BIO-Carbon Autonomous Deployment

NERC's BIO-Carbon programme, which seeks to gain a better understanding of the role marine organisms play in storing carbon in the ocean, has successfully completed a major research expedition co-funded by the FMRI programme.

FMRI has invested £1.0m over 2-years to enable the deployment of two, long-range autonomous vehicles to support the fieldwork taking place on the research vessel RRS Discovery. Travelling for over 2 months with cutting-edge sensors, the BIO-Carbon expedition has demonstrated the scientific impact that can be achieved by using autonomous capabilities to augment the role of research ships. This new understanding will help to inform the decisions about the mix of capabilities required for NERC's future marine research infrastructure.

You can read more about the success of the FMRI BIO-Carbon deployment in this BBC Feature Article or the NOC website.

Scientists, business leaders and politicians are asking whether we can manipulate the ocean to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to reduce the effect of climate change. We clearly need to understand the side effects first, yet we still lack basic knowledge of how marine life will respond to climate change even before we perturb it further. These expeditions and the wider BIO-Carbon programme will deliver fundamental insights that will allow us to make robust predictions and informed decisions.