[CPEO-MEF] "Robot arm could remove reef bombs"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Robot arm could remove reef bombs

Remote device set to save Puerto Rico's fish from noxious chemicals.

Michael Hopkin
Nature
August 9, 2005

The best thing to do with an unexploded bomb is usually to leave it 
alone. But scientists working on an abandoned US Navy bombing range in 
Puerto Rico have an ambitious plan to remove the site's decaying 
explosives to prevent an ecological disaster.

The researchers have developed a remote-controlled robot arm, which sits 
in shallow waters and picks the bombs from where they lie off the 
eastern shores of the island of Vieques. Capable of lifting up to 225 
kilograms, the device lifts the bombs into a cradle that floats to the 
surface using air tanks.

The device could be used to remove bombs from the dozens of underwater 
bombing ranges around the world, says the team led by coral-reef expert 
James Porter of the University of Georgia, Athens, who surveyed the 
island, and James Barton, president of Underwater Ordnance Recovery, the 
Norfolk, Virginia-based company that designed the robot.

"Every coastal state of the United States, as well as the Great Lakes, 
rivers, and reefs on Guam and Hawaii, are affected," Porter told the 
annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Montreal, Canada, 
this week. "Preparation for war is messy."

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050808/full/050808-5.html

--
Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org

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