There's a lot of thought about the future

of human-occupied vehicles,

and the fact of the matter is that it's always more risky

to put somebody at the bottom of the ocean

than it is to put a robot.

I've been on a number of dives now,

and every single one, I still get butterflies in my stomach.

Going down, descending through an hour of darkness.

There are very specific conditions

that the sub is allowed to operate in,

very specific conditions that you're not allowed

to operate in.

You can't drive into a cave.

Hot water is a hazard to the vehicle.

Underwater volcanoes are obviously perfect example

of place where you wouldn't wanna put people.

You know, it's like lava bombs going off.

There's only 72 hours of reserve oxygen,

so that's where it is incumbent upon the pilot

to avoid being entangled in anything

that would keep them stuck to the seafloor.

There are no other vehicles to come out

and rescue the submersible.

There's just nothing else that would be

in a close proximity.

The sub will never approach sunken shipwrecks anymore.

There's too many errors where the vehicle can get entangled

and that's good work for ROV these days.

The sort of question of comparing ROVs,

or remotely operated vehicles, to HOVs,

or human-occupied vehicles, is sort of a perennial one.

When I started, Alvin was literally the only effective way

to get to the seafloor, to do science on the seafloor.

ROVs were not a primary tool for getting to the seafloor.

In the 25 years I've been at the institution,

ROVs have progressed to the point

that now they're a completely valid scientific tool,

and they're in use all over the world.

If I use a remotely operated vehicle,

I can take the robot down to the seafloor

and leave it there for days on end,

and slowly, meticulously work on an area of the seafloor

that's a few square meters.

What can be missing, though, is the broader context.

With a remotely operated vehicle,

where you're interacting with a screen,

the cameras are seeing the same thing,

and you view that screen as the whole world.

In a submersible, when you're down on the seafloor

and you're looking out the viewport,

you have the ability to take in a lot of information

and you're able to push yourself a little bit,

because you can see where the light fades from the vehicle

and say, well, let's go a little further,

let's move around the corner.

I was on the first scientific dive of the Alvin

after it was certified, and to actually climb into it,

and go to the bottom of the ocean.

The views are just spectacular.

It's unbelievable! Congratulations!

(they laugh)

All that work! Really neat, yeah!

There really is nothing

like seeing the environment firsthand,

but as we depend more and more on automation

and try and refine technologies like 3D vision and the like,

we may find ourselves moving away from Alvin,

and in 50 years, 100 years, we may look back and think,

whoa, boy, we really put people's lives at risk.

I think the verdict's still out, though.