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Robot Submarine Poisons Sea Stars To Save Coral Reefs
schwit1 writes: A 30-kilogram robotic yellow submarine is keeping sea stars in check with poison. The sea stars periodically have huge population booms, and a square kilometer of reef can be home to 100,000 of them. They'll kill off the reefs if left unchecked, but humans can only kill a couple sea stars per minute. The task is overwhelming but simple and repetitive, and thus ripe for automation. The COTSBot has "a maximum speed of over two meters per second and an endurance of over six hours. Five thrusters give it the capability of briefly hovering in the water column, giving it time to attack crown of thorns sea stars with an integrated poison injection system. It's completely autonomous, down to the identification and targeting of [sea stars] lurking among coral."
First they came for the sea stars, but I said nothing...
It's not like humans "correcting" eco-systems they brought off-kilter has ever gone wrong before.
Prototype terminator version 0.001 in testing.
Let's hope "SeaNet" doesn't become self-aware.
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Interesting use of technology, I hope it works well. This sort of thing might be a useful way to address the growing problem of invasive species, many of which are aquatic. It seems to be a preferable means of addressing the issue instead of trying to introduce more predator species in an attempt to control an invasive species.
If it doesn't it should carry a "body cam" to review the kills to ensure is it working properly and not killing things it shouldn't.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Why are we humans entitled to dictate nature and kill species this way? Aren't we supposed to preserve nature and leave it alone? Nature has done just fine for millions of years, it needs no help from us to strike a balance.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
who decides that one life form (and a lower one at that) is more valuable than another? That's like culling a lion pride because they eat antelope and their food source might not be sufficient. This is outrageous.
It's a sad day indeed that the most relevant post so far is a cold fjord troll. Why do you other people bother to post when you must realise how utterly clueless you all are. Crown of thorns starfish are a destructive invasive species that need to be taken care of for the good of the rest of the entire reef. But you keep telling us how you're so smart and we are playing god etc etc.
The original post failed to mention that the Crown of Thorns Starfish was an invasive species to the Great Barrier Reef. This is also not mentioned in Wikipedia, but in another post on this thread. In other words, we caused the problem and are now trying to fix it. That would make sense.
Given the lack of clarity in the OP, the response, "Who are we to tamper with nature", is perfectly reasonable.
... and cause of the world's problems ?! Just out of curiousity, why the boom in sea star population? Does this happen regularly ie. part of a natural cycle? And does the interruption of that cycle have any repercussions?
Question: should humans intervene in natural processes that they do not completely understand.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
This isn't an issue where "nature" will work itself out and we aren't slaughtering innocent sea stars wholesale. We as humans have messed up a good chunk of the reef with chemicals and pollution. The sea stars are forced to go eat the good part of the reef left we're trying to preserve because WE as humans took away their habitat. They have little natural predators, reproduce like crazy, and no commercial value.
I want to be the first to welcome our poison-injecting robotic overlords.
I do hope whoever wrote the pattern recognition algorithm checked, double checked & triple checked it.
And then sent it for code-review, static and dynamic code analyzers and finally
open sourced it for the swarm of eyeballs that surely audit the code for free.
It's cool just as long as there's no clear analog to robots recognizing and poisoning animals with automated flying drones.
Without this technology the oceans have survived billions of years. Why do we need to come and "save" the reefs? There are natural cycles to life where sometimes life is prosperous and other times there are are die-offs. If they really care about saving the reefs then they would create an international ban on bottom trawlers and overfishing.
Wait. Has anyone thought about this? Maybe this is supposed to be happening? Maybe it's an evolutionary event?
Oh, when it's all about eliminating starfish suddenly you people don't mind the Kill-Bots!
Allegedly they considered building robots, because the crown-of-thorns' natural enemy, the giant triton were nearly harvested to death, only eat one starfish a week, and only reproduce slowly in their natural environment.
Technology aside, if a 20 kg carnivorous snail isn't cool, I'm not sure what is.
Wonder if anybody has considered coming up with ways to efficiently breed these guys? I think they'd make awesome pets.
I don't know how many species have been hunted to extinction, but wouldn't a better solution here be to just capture them and eat them instead of killing them?
Maybe do some marketing and turn them into the next lobster.
...we don't look like sea stars to some galactic race.
Right in the ear!
Production of the M.A.R.K. 13 has resumed after The Company has fixed the waterproofing process. 800 new jobs will be created as The Company enters full mass production of the unit ...
Seems we are taking sides in Mother Nature's struggles for survival.
It begs the question, "What animal keeps these critters populations down, and why isn't out there doing it?"
Have gnu, will travel.
So what about the dead rotting poison-riddled carcases? Are they going to disrupt the ecosystem?
A single species of sea-star is a single species of sea-star. A coral reef is the home and foundation to one of the most ecologically diverse places on earth. Destroy the coral and the place turns into a wasteland.
We should be taking sides. The human analogy is terrorists moving through a city and destroying it, displacing the population and leaving nothing in their wake.
Lobsters eat sea star fish and are much tastier than a robot, perhaps we should breed thousands of tasty meals to eat up star fish.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Lionfish are taking over reefs in Florida. Luckily they are easy to spear since they just stay still. They should also be an easy target for something like this.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I remember a similar problem with pigeons.
We ended up releasing lizards that fed on the pigeons.
Then we released Chinese needle snakes to eat the lizards.
To control the snakes, we released gorillas.
Once wintertime rolled around, the gorillas simply froze to death.
Exhibit A: http://i.imgur.com/6e4rNnt.png
Fast forward to 2015: http://i.imgur.com/UurlCl7.jpg
edit: if you're confused by the second picture, that's what Detroit looks like after it was ruined by a different kind of invasive species.
For those of you wondering what the fuck I'm talking about, consider this:
1. Frozen chickens don't grow on trees. You want to eat meat? An animal has to die.
2. Carrots were alive once. You're anti-hunting? Draw the line somewhere. Even fungus is life. You're gonna give up Quorn for your moral stance, or are you going to be a hypocrite?
3. Ever take the train? Thank people like me for the fact that there are fewer rabbits digging under the ties, causing them to sink under their own weight and dropping away deforming the rails when a train runs over them.
4. Ever fly? Thank people like me for the fact that your flight doesn't swallow a flock of pigeons at 140mph.
On #3 and #4: I eat rabbits, they don't go to waste. Town pigeons go straight to the incinerator (I have my own, the city doesn't like burning biohazardous waste), wood pigeons which are visibly healthier and less likely to be carrying crippling parasites get cooked in with other game animals such as partridge, quail, hare and pheasant, and make great party nibbles.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
So after successfully deploying the flying automated killer drones, here's a submarine version, next up: A two legged version to anihilate whatever species is considered a disturbance on land.
you would think people would understand how this works by now.
If Australia failed to eradicate its rabbit population after unleashing two biological weapons - plagues! - against them, then what hope is this weak tactic of a robot killing starfish one by one. These things lay eggs by the millions! "breed like rabbits"... no, breed like starfish!
Isn't this a perfect thing to livestream? Imagine having a bad day at work or school, then come home and watch a few hundred sea stars get poisoned. I would be totally down for that!
So, corals which are more simple species than starfish are being protected? We should kill all humans then :D