Stony Brook launches remote-controlled craft to study marine biodiversity

A team of scientists launched a sleek new vessel this week on an inlet off Shinnecock Bay: a remote-controlled, solar-powered craft that can roam solo for months at a time, collecting data on biodiversity in the bay.

The 12-foot-long craft can survey all the creatures that are floating, swimming or crawling in the ocean by collecting the DNA they naturally shed — without harming or even touching them, or their delicate marine habitat.

"This is the first of its kind," said Ellen Pikitch, a professor at Stony Brook University’s marine and atmospheric sciences department and one of the lead investigators on the project.

The ecological health of Shinnecock Bay has recovered substantially since a wave of brown and red tides killed off scallops, clams and finfish in the 1980s. Hard clam sanctuaries, oyster reefs and seagrass beds, planted by Pikitch’s program and by Shinnecock Nation ecologists, filter the murky water and provide habitat for young fish.

But scientists seeking to get a clear picture of which creatures have returned to the bay have had to make do with imprecise survey methods: visual and auditory surveys, which inevitably miss things, and bottom trawlers, nets that scoop up sea life from the water column and from the sea floor.

But trawling is destructive — it damages the sea floor, uproots seagrass and kills some of the marine animals researchers are aiming to protect. The trawlers miss things too — organisms that are either too tiny or too large to get caught in the net.

Around 2019, Pikitch started using environmental DNA sampling (eDNA), which offers a more comprehensive account of the species in the water.

"We can capture the broadest spectrum of marine life possible," Pikitch said. "You really get to see everything that’s there, including things that are rare."

In 14 years of visual and trawling surveys, Pikitch and her colleagues found just four species of sharks, rays and skates. In just the past few years using eDNA they’ve detected 12.

But although DNA sequencing is a cutting-edge technology, collecting the samples on the open ocean is a cumbersome job, involving a large research vessel with a crew of five to 10, keeping sterilized sample bottles on ice and racing back to the lab before the DNA breaks down. Then there are days of labor, filtering and extracting the DNA.

Pikitch teamed up with Kelsey Leonard, a professor for the environment at Waterloo University in Ontario, Canada, and a member of the Shinnecock Nation, and two environmental tech firms to find a better way.

The result is the DataXplorer, engineered by Open Ocean Robotics and McLane Research Laboratories. It is outfitted with solar panels, three cameras for a 360-degree view and a patented roll bar, which enables the boat to right itself if it capsizes in rough weather.

There is also an automated eDNA sampling machine that collects water in a small canister, filters it so the DNA remains, adds a preservative to keep it stable for a month and then cues up the next canister to take another sample.

The specimens collected during the vessel’s maiden voyage this week and in the next several weeks will be sequenced and tallied and compared with samples scooped by hand.

This is just a two-week mission. But by next year, the research team hopes the next-generation DataXplorer will be cruising around Shinnecock Bay.

This zero-carbon, noninvasive technology, Leonard said, aligns with the Indigenous ethic of least harm. It shows "how we can be less destructive in the science we do, so we can support the living communities that support us every day."