From the bottom of the icy black, where sight and sound are swallowed by the darkness of the deepest seas, they swarm from a chasm on the ocean floor, fueled by the dual carnal desires of aquatic beast and machine.
Robot Fish.
“WE MUST FEED!” they cry, a mechanical screech from the parts of the ocean closest to hell.
A horrified public demands a solution as San Francisco is completely devoured.
Who will stop them?! Lorenzo Lamas? Billy Baldwin? A crew of Hollywood backwash in a nuclear…drilling…tube, or whatever the screenwriter comes up with by lunch.
No, actually. None of that. In fact, hopefully, nothing stops them.
Because they are here to save us.
Leave your B-Horror flick based assumptions behind, because these particular robot fish are the furthest thing from fiction. The next step in combating pollution, these mechanical anomalies will take us places we’ve never been.
The British started all this madness (of course!). Scientists at the University of Essex have designed a group of robotic fish, meant to embody the most dominant aspects of a variety of underwater-dwellers: the acceleration of a pike, the speed of a tuna, and the body of a carp.
These Frankenfish (not to be confused with the captivating film) are almost five feet long and able to travel up to 2.24 MPH, the robots are 100% self navigating, even being able to tell when their eight hour battery has dried up and it is time to head back into dock in order to recharge. The UE technicians spent three years developing this project for a very specific purpose:
To take on a mega-shark.
Nope.
Its real nemesis lies amidst the chopping waves of the North Pacific, where the surface is clouded by layers of plastic, crappy trash. It’s the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and it’s a wonder of the world kindly contributed by years of reckless waste disposal. It is oceanic environmental terrors like this that give rise to a solution as far-fetched as a squadron of carp-bots, but hey.
These scientists didn’t create the situation; they’re dealing with it.
Fish, obviously, are more adept at underwater travel than humans. Unfortunately, there are places we need to go and actions we need to take that our size and avert ability to drown limit us from accomplishing. The answer then, of course, presents itself through the labors of the Essex scientists.
Now, we will be able to seek out pollutants, investigate sunken ships, detect fertilizer runoff, and check out pipes, holes, and other places that a human would be foolish to try and infiltrate. Issues like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch will be monitored and studied, so that a response can be adequately created.
Big enough not to be caught in nets and trackable so as not to collide with vessels, the robot fish seem to be flawless for their intended purposes. Even sharks have stayed away from them, finding the electromagnetic field they give off most distressful.
Yes, by September 2011, the world will have another weapon in the fight battle for Earth’s soul. When the fish are dropped in the waters off Northern Spain, will we advance against the unnatural detriments caused by our own human squalor? Will they leap into their mission, in a Free Willy-esque display of dedication to the cause?
Hopefully, they maintain their detective work and bring us another step closer toward getting a handle on our polluted oceans. Ironic, that the very model used to construct a device to improve the environment was inspired by a creature in danger of being destroyed because of our harm to it.
God speed, fish-bots. God speed.
Handout file photo from BMT Group.
REUTERS/Jonas Borg/UPPA/Photoshot
