Nautile

Nautile

The French maritime research institute, Ifremer, owns the deep-sea submersible known as the Nautile. The Nautile is designed for observing and operating at deep depths. The submersible was commissioned in 1984 and since then has logged nearly 1,500 dives from the research vessels Nadir or l'Atalante. The Nautile is capable of operating at depths up to 6 kilometers. The Nautile has many different types of cameras and has a set of twin robotic arms. It is also equipped with acoustic image mapping which lets the ship send footage that they find of underwater objects to the surface. A maximum of three people can be in the Nautile during a dive and the people onboard have a very small three-meter wide cabin. The submarine can carry five hours’ worth of oxygen. The Nautile is capable of traveling at a speed of 1.7 knots since it has four different thruster motors. If necessary, the Nautile can have a tiny robot probe called Robin. This probe can detach from the submarine and can be operated by remote control in order to look at inaccessible areas or dangerous wrecks.

The Nautile is most famous for exploring the Titanic site and searching for and raising other wrecks, but does many other things. The Nautile has assisted other submersibles that were in distress. It explores specific zones collecting samples and manipulating special tools. The Nautile assists in many offshore assignments. It is involved in pipeline layouts and inspections.

The Nautile was responsible for discovering eight species of carnivorous sponges that were near active hydrothermal vents near the East Pacific Rise and of the North Fiji and Lau Basins. Once discovered, the observation from the submersibles was used to describe the sponges’ life conditions. The sponges that were found suggest that there is a lot of diversity among sponges in the deep pacific.