About This Project

The project aims to develop a compact, cost-effective deepwater sensors & environmental DNA (eDNA) samplers to revolutionize deepwater research, in areas where such studies are limited. Overcoming the drawbacks of traditional, costly methods like Niskin bottles, the new design aims to enhance accessibility and frequency of deepwater ecosystem studies. This innovation could dramatically improve our knowledge of deep-sea biodiversity offering significant contributions to global ocean conservation.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

The deep sea (waters >200 meters in depth) remain one of the least explored and understood ecosystems on our planet, despite covering a vast majority of the Earth's surface. In the Philippines, a country with territorial waters predominantly deeper than 200 meters, the exploration and study of marine biodiversity are hindered by the cost and logistical challenges associated with deploying traditional sampling equipment, like in many other coastal nations. The development of a compact, affordable deepwater eDNA sampler would be a significant step forward in unlocking the mysteries of these hidden ecosystems.

What is the significance of this project?

Traditionally deep sea water samplers needs to be deployed from large cranes, and are limited to large and expensive vessels operations, often unaccessible in the global south. The newly developed deepwater sampler will be an effective methods to capture eDNA, while being more accessible due to reduced costs and increased deployability. It will be able to be deployed by hand from any small local vessel, allowing researchers and citizen scientists around the world collect samples and contribute to local and global projects. Paired with the decreasing cost of metabarcoding (a tool to identify all species present in an area from a water sample through the use of genetics) the samplers will allow to scale up deep sea knowledge and awareness globally.

What are the goals of the project?

The wider goal of our work is to make deep sea more accessible to the scientific community of the global south, by lowering the cost of equipments and making technologies equally and equitably available for small research groups and citizen scientists.

This project aim to develop a compact, cost-effective deep sea water sampler to be used to extract eDNA, equipped with basic sensors, that is cheaper and easier to deploy than traditional samplers;

We will then test the efficacy and efficiency of the sampler in capturing eDNA from deepwater environments in the Philippines by analysing eDNA quality and quantity extracted;

The results will be used to raise awareness on deepwater biodiversity importance and shared on Github.