Green Options

An ecologist and an engineer at Michigan State University are working together to create robot fish that can better monitor various factors in aquatic environments.

Combining the brilliance of nature with some top-notch engineering, these two scientists are on to something and getting the funding for it.

The researchers are breaking ground with this and looking to raise water monitoring to another level.

So-called “dead zones”–patches of ocean lacking aerobic (oxygen breathing) life–will most likely increase due to a rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations.

Because of CO2 build up in the atmosphere, its level of concentration in the oceans also increases. There, some of the CO2 converts to a simple acid called carbonic acid. (H2CO3).

What is becoming a much-studied phenomenon in recent years, these dead zones of depleted oxygen (02) - typically found at depths between 300 and 600 meters–are the result of several factors working separately and in combination: lower sea surface 02 levels, less heat exchanging (”ventilation”) with mid-level ocean depths due to over-all warming, and “euthrophication events” (an over-growth of a species due to excess nutrients).