INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. – On Friday, the Tahoe Fund and Restoring the Lake Depths Foundation used an ROV called Deep Emerald (affectionately nicknamed Emmy) to trawl Lake Tahoe’s depths. The high-definition camera captured what looked like a deep blue starfield at 1,570 feet below, an exciting glimpse below the water that few have seen.
Deep Emerald was funded by the Tahoe Fund and Martis Camp Foundation and is the flagship remote-operated vehicle of Restoring the Lake Depths Foundation. It has a fiber optic tether, which allows it to have higher resolution video capabilities, better data feedback and enables it to reach the depths of the lake.
Tim Crandle, president of SeaView Systems, explained that the company helped modify the ROV to enable these features—traditional ROVs use a copper cable, which doesn’t allow for the same resolution and depth capability. Deep Emerald has open-source electronics from Blue Robotics and Mission Robotics.
Crandle also said that he believed in the future, ROVs could be programmed to function autonomously, like picking up trash. The Martis Fund provided the Restoring the Lake Depths Foundation with a grant that funded a tether system, which allows them to pull trash they collect with ROVs…