June 12, 2025 — From the Classroom to the Coast
In September 2024, our Gear Research Team got an exciting email. It was from Robbie Munsey, a Computer Science Coordinator at St. Anne’s-Belfield School in Charlottesville, Virginia. He asked if someone from our team could talk to his middle school robotics students about on-demand fishing gear and how underwater cameras could help in our research. I often handle outreach like this, and I was thrilled to connect with these future scientists.
After several calls and emails—and after the students won both state and regional robotics competitions—the team shipped their project to us. It was an acoustically triggered, 360-degree underwater camera. They were preparing for the 2025 FIRST Championship World Robotics Competition held April 29–May 2 in Houston, Texas. They wanted us to field test it ahead of the competition.
The Tech Behind the Camera
Let me tell you… they didn’t just send a basic prototype. What arrived was a well-packaged, acoustically triggered, 360-degree underwater camera system. It came with an easy-to-follow manual, spare parts, and everything we needed to power and deploy it. The setup was intuitive, and I only needed one quick video call with the team to confirm a few details.
The camera itself is housed in a waterproof casing rated for depths of up to 150 meters, or about 500 feet. Attached to it are two powerful lights and an acoustic release system—components we regularly use in our fieldwork. These students had cleverly modified the acoustic trigger with magnets to activate the camera and lights when they received a signal from the surface.