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Deep-sea exploration — Okeanos Explorer & Ocean Networks Canada

Find ROV (remotely operated vehicle) dive missions and the deep-sea video footage they collected.

What this teaches

  • Two complementary sources for deep-sea video: NOAA HYPERION (Okeanos Explorer) and SEATUBE (Ocean Networks Canada)
  • The dive-as-item structure (one STAC item per dive)
  • Asset key video_chunks for accessing segmented dive video

Sources used: HYPERION, SEATUBE

Prompt

Find NOAA Okeanos Explorer ROV dives in the Pacific. List the missions
and tell me how to access the dive video.

Transcript

1. List recent Okeanos Explorer dives

search_datasets(collections = "HYPERION", limit = 5)

Real items include:

ID Mission / Dive Location Date
cHJpdmF0ZS9QUzI1MjMvUk9WMDI PS2523 — ROV02 -118.24, 34.05 2025-08-10
cHJpdmF0ZS9QUzI1MjMvUk9WMDE PS2523 — ROV01 -118.25, 34.05 2025-08-11
cHVibGljL0VYMTcwOC9FWDE3MDhfRElWRTE1XzIwMTcwOTIx EX1708 — DIVE15 -161.67, 28.69 2017-09-21

Note: item IDs are base64-encoded GCS paths. Each item is a single dive with associated video chunks.

Asset keys: video_chunks (list of MP4 segments). The provider links back to NOAA's Ocean Exploration Data Atlas at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/maps/ocean-exploration-data-atlas/.

2. Get a dive's video manifest

get_item(collection = "HYPERION", item_id = "cHVibGljL0VYMTcwOC9FWDE3MDhfRElWRTE1XzIwMTcwOTIx")

Returns the dive item with video_chunks asset (MP4 segments) plus the catalog-level metadata.

3. Cross-source: Ocean Networks Canada SeaTube

search_datasets(collections = "SEATUBE", limit = 5)

Same dive-as-item shape, but ROV expeditions from ONC's SeaTube platform (different geographic focus — ONC's coverage is heavy in BC, the Salish Sea, and Pacific deep-sea cabled observatories).

Result the agent gave

"HYPERION currently indexes 14 ROV dive items. Three notable from a limit=5 sample:

  • EX1708 / DIVE15 (item ID cHVibGljL0VYMTcwOC9FWDE3MDhfRElWRTE1XzIwMTcwOTIx) — Okeanos Explorer expedition EX1708, dive 15, 2017-09-21. Single-point geometry at -161.67°W, 28.69°N (central North Pacific). Public dataset.
  • PS2523 / ROV02 (cHJpdmF0ZS9QUzI1MjMvUk9WMDI) — 2025-08-10. Title carries (Private) suffix. Bbox -118.24°W to -118.24°W, 34.05°N to 34.06°N — Southern California coastal.
  • PS2523 / ROV01 (cHJpdmF0ZS9QUzI1MjMvUk9WMDE) — 2025-08-11, paired with the dive above.

Item IDs are base64-encoded GCS paths (the prefix cHVibGljLw decodes to public/, cHJpdmF0ZS8 to private/). Each dive's primary asset is video_chunks — a list of MP4 segment URLs. The catalog landing page links to NOAA's Ocean Exploration Data Atlas at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/maps/ocean-exploration-data-atlas/ for dive maps, expedition reports, and contextual metadata.

For complementary ROV coverage in the Pacific Northwest and Salish Sea — Ocean Networks Canada's cabled observatory program — query the SEATUBE collection."

Variations

  • Specific mission ID: q = "EX1708" to find all dives from that expedition.
  • Specific region: tighten the bbox to e.g. the Mariana Trench, Hawaiian seamounts, or a specific feature.
  • Public-only dives: SeaTube dives are fully public; HYPERION mixes public and private — check the title for the (Private) suffix.