In October 2023, Project COESS deployed two Shallow Fugro Environmental Landers in Japan Sea to carry out long-term seafloor monitoring. Shall In June 2024, we visited the landers with a Full Depth Underwater Drone see how the landers were doing. Squids in the area seemed quite interested in the lights on the Underwater Drone system. In addition to swimming very close to the drone, they squirted clouds of ink in the water.
Filming under 560m of seawater at Torigakubi Spur, Japan Sea during July of 2023 revealed a variety of forms of seafloor kljlife on the seafloor. These were filmed using a Full Depth seafloor drone prototype.
One of the mysteries that we have seen around methane seeps is that snow crabs will often gather around the bubbling gas, which freezes and sticks to them as gas hydrate, eventually causing the crab to flip over. This has been observed not only in Japan Sea, but in other parts of the world where the seafloor hosts both gas seeps and shallow methane hydrate.