TRENDING NOW: Autonomous Surface Vehicles, What's Next for Oil and Gas Markets, Deep-Sea Mining Technology
Ocean News & Technology
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Sneak Peak of "TAKE 5: The ON&T Interview with SeaRobotics"
Few names are as synonymous with Uncrewed Vehicles & Marine Robotics than SeaRobotics Corp. The Florida-based out?t passed a major milestone in 2024, one which few can lay claim to: a quarter of a century of designing and manufacturing ASVs. We sat down with SeaRobotics President Don Darling to get his take on the burgeoning ASV industry and what the future holds.
1. Tell us a little about SeaRobotics’ story to date…
SeaRobotics really started in 1999, so we have been at this for a while now. You might even call us ASV pioneers. While we have designed and manufactured almost 70 di?erent autonomous and semi-autonomous platforms over the last 25 years, it wasn’t until now that we have seen scalable interest in ASV technology from the private sector. In the past, most ASV technology was developed with a particular project in mind and often commissioned by defense contractors. But the variables—economic, geopolitical, and even cultural—have shifted, and today, there is an undeniable acceptance that deploying uncrewed vehicles on, below, and above the waterline is a means to safely and e?ciently carry out at-sea operations. As a result, the ASV industry is starting to organize e?orts to target speci?c categories of customer base.
Sneak Peak of "Are Commodity Markets About to Change?"
In the first week of September, America’s benchmark oil price, West Texas Intermediate, fell below $70 per barrel. It dropped to $66, the lowest price in the past 32 months. Did breaking this long-term support level signal a market change underway?
In eight weeks from late July, WTI fell from the mid-$80s to the mid-$60s for many reasons. Initially, it was concern over whether the US was heading into or already in a recession. That would cut oil use. The concern was generated by labor market reports suggesting greater weakness than expected, usually associated with recessions or slow growth.
However, the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank’s GDP forecaster predicts a third-quarter growth rate of 3 percent—a healthy economy. Confusion over economic conditions was fanned by a labor market revision which found 800,000 fewer jobs in June 2024 than was previously reported. How do that many jobs disappear? Don’t worry, we were told, because some experts expected an even larger negative revision. For over 12 months, we were told about healthy monthly job gains only to find out they were fictional.
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The quest to source deep-sea minerals from the seafloor began over five decades ago, with early technology trials in the 1970s led by major companies like bp and Rio Tinto . These companies explored various technologies to collect one particular type of deep-sea resource, polymetallic nodules, rich in metals like nickel, copper, cobalt and manganese. Yet, in the absence of regulations, progress slowed.
Fast forward fifty years and, thanks to major leaps in subsea robotics, the industry is on the cusp of a new era, with companies like The Metals Company (TMC) and Allseas leading the way.
Since the 1970s, these technologies have seen dramatic improvements, with many of the breakthroughs coming from the offshore oil and gas sector’s expertise in developing sophisticated deep-sea systems. And with the transition away from fossil fuels expected to sustain exponential growth in demand for base metals needed for the production of batteries, clean energy, and global infrastructure, these advancements are now being adapted for use in deep-sea nodule collection, enabling more efficient and lower-impact methods of mineral sourcing.
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