It was my second day on board the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) research vessel Lady Basten and I had enjoyed my Clive Cussler paperback for a mere two hours when it went missing. Vixen 03 isn’t Cussler’s latest book, but the novel was bestowed upon me like a prize after leaving the Institute at Cape Ferguson, near Townsville.

Researchers on board regarded the book as an essential read, especially for newcomers. I had read only a few chapters, but was hooked, and the book’s disappearance was driving me mad. Searching every nook and cranny of the vessel, I made my way through the galley, scouring cupboards. Finally, a dog-eared corner peered out from under a table. Got it! I was no sleuth, but clearly a scientist had taken it. Another Cussler fanatic, no doubt.

Mike Cappo and Peter Speare
prepare to launch 'BRUV'

Cussler’s books often make their way onto AIMS expeditions. His novels portray the adventures of marine troubleshooter Dirk Pitt, who always manages to save the world from disaster. In one book, Pitt manages to raise the Titanic! No easy feat. But for AIMS researchers, who often have their tongues planted in their cheeks, Dirk Pitt is something of a comedic hero.

Quickly I opened Vixen 03, flipping back to the page where I had left off…

Down in the cold depths the camera slowly drifted closer to the object materializing on the monitor. Pitt sat as though turned to oak as a large white star on a dark-blue background crept into his view. He waited for the camera to continue its probe…Steiger became aware of the tension, raised his head, and looked inquiringly at Pitt. ‘You got something?’

‘An aircraft with military markings.’ Pitt said, controlling the excitement he felt.

The resemblance of this scene to the AIMS expedition was remarkable. Was it a coincidence that a team of researchers heading out to discover a lost wreck would be reading a novel about an oceanographer discovering a lost wreck? The Cussler novel had Dirk looking for a military airplane lost in a Colorado lake. The discovery involved a submerged camera, like the two high-tech video systems used by scientists on the Lady Basten. Was life imitating art?

Excitement had been building all week. It was day four of the expedition and the Lady Basten was steaming towards Rib Reef. On the first leg, the scientists had trialled the use of videography to observe life on the seafloor. Overshadowing this research, however, was their desire to find a lost World War II plane wreck. A remotely operated video nicknamed "Rover" had given the team high hopes that they might find and document the wreck.

"Rover" was a sizeable 40 kilos, with two video cameras and lights attached, as well as a motor for propulsion and electronic controls, all wrapped in aluminium housing and caged in steel. The vertical camera on Rover was helpful in shooting the seafloor, while the forward-facing camera primarily steered the machine.

Today the AIMS team were monitoring images on the depth sounder. They were attempting to match established locator points for the wreck with large images on the sounder. However, before Rover was placed in the water, the team decided to deploy a fleet of six inexpensive devices known as BRUVS (baited remote underwater video stations). These were put near the known markings for the wreck, to provide insight into the marine life of the area.

Finally, the moment arrived to lower Rover into the water. Anticipation was palpable as senior oceanographic technician Cary Mclean positioned himself behind Rover’s futuristic controls. Watching on were marine scientists Peter Speare and Mike Cappo, who strained to see if the robot would catch a glimpse of the wreck. Rover moved slowly at first, with poor visibility making navigation tough. Then, at 57 metres, disaster struck. Sitting motionless on the bottom, Rover could not be moved upwards or forwards. The search came to a halt. The crew were forced to pull Rover out of the water by his "umbilical cord".

Disappointed, Mclean, Cappo and Speare inspected their beast and discovered damage to a buoyancy device. The foam used to keep Rover afloat had shrivelled and shrunk under high hydrostatic pressure. The robot could be repaired, but further deployment would have to wait. Rover "was not feeling well" and a sign placed on him read "my head hurts".

Ninety minutes later, the six BRUVS were retrieved. Cappo methodically began screening footage from each location in the laboratory. Time elapsed. The mood on board became subdued. Then a chorus of shouts and cheers erupted. Everyone scrambled to look at Cappo’s screen. To everyone’s surprise, the eye of camera five was staring straight up into the bomber itself. "We’ve found it! It’s sitting on the bomber! It’s in the bloody co-pilot seat!" said Speare.

The BRUVS footage was rewound and played in slow motion, this time as it descended past the plane’s wing and settled in the cockpit.

Rover - side view

Unfortunately, the camera could not be controlled, monitored or moved, once in the water. The scientists were left with footage captured by a single stationary camera.

Surely Dirk Pitt had experienced similar problems. I consulted Cussler for insight:

Sweet Jesus!’ Giordino gasped. ‘A MATS transport.’

‘Can you tell what model?’ Steiger asked feverishly.

Pitt shook his head. ‘Not yet. The camera angle missed the more easily identifiable engines and nose section. It came across the left wing tip and, as you can see, is now moving towards the tail.’

The resolution was so clear that they could almost make out the flush rivets in the aluminium skin. It was all so strange and incongruous. It was difficult for them to accept the image the television equipment relayed to their eyes.

Then in 1998, AIMS and CSIRO scientists revisited the area to map sponge and seawhip "gardens". Outstanding fish catches were still occurring in the area and the scientists towed a television camera and side-scan sonar over the strange object below. But they were unknowingly 200 metres out from the bomber, due to the use of a different navigational tool known as a "geoid".

In 1999, the AIMS/CSIRO team got another chance, this time with a ROV on board owned by CSIRO. The correct geoid was used and the television camera was towed through the marks, on the way to an offshore study site. Initially the video revealed large three-metre holes of unknown origin.

"Suddenly, this big black thing loomed up. We couldn’t raise the camera in time and BOOM! The camera hit the bomber – the last thing we saw was an extreme close-up of some rivets on a flat plate," Mike Cappo recalled.

Intrigued by the possibilities, CSIRO’s Greg Smith, Ted Wassenberg and leader Dr Roland Pitcher readied the HyBall "Offshore" ROV for a dive. The flight downward revealed a halo of holes in the seabed and numerous large fish, rays and Queensland groper, before the wreck loomed into sight.

Lying 44 metres below the surface, the wreck appeared to be a twin-engined plane with one-and-a-half wings, possibly a Beaufighter bomber of World War II vintage. It was partially draped with a piece of lost trawl net..

The location of the wreck is not far from a Palm Island airbase used in World War II. Scientists speculated that the bomber may have crashed on an attempted landing or takeoff. In 2001, fisherman Bruce Morgensen demonstrated to the scientists that the trawl fleet had known of the location and nature of the wrecked plane for years. It was apparently a notorious "hookup" that claimed nets unless avoided.

Searching for and videotaping an historical wreck was a "first" on many levels for the collaborating scientists. It was also an opportunity to try out underwater video technology which holds great promise in mapping deep habitats, beyond the time and depth limits imposed by SCUBA diving. The vast tracts of seabed between the reefs support major biodiversity resources and prawn fisheries.

"Scientific tools like trawls, benthic grabs and dredging can be destructive to the marine environment," Speare said. "Using video to document what is down there is a more environmentally safe method of surveying," he said. In 2001 Speare and Cappo trialled the use of BRUVs to identify and count fish in reef habitats below the limits of SCUBA. Baited with minced pilchards and deployed in a string of six, the BRUVS recorded for 90 minutes, providing images now on the AIMS website.

Researchers hope Rover, in conjunction with BRUVS, will help them charter new ground on the Barrier Reef and obtain digital video imagery of previously inaccessible areas. Rover is equipped with on-screen display stating the depth, temperature, time and compass direction. "This machine is like a 70,000 play station - and I get paid to play with it! I’m tilting my head and craning it around corners I can’t see!" said Mclean, who operates the controls.

On the latest expedition, Mclean’s expertise in deploying oceanographic equipment was crucial to the AIMS scientists. After one or two wrong turns, Mclean mastered the art of driving Rover. On the first day, near Cape Bowling Green, problems erupted in Rover’s connections, with the bottom camera’s monitor cutting out. Mclean spent hours taking apart the contraption and manipulating seals and connectors until the machine came back to life.

Speare was keen to test Rover’s ability to dive deep (to depths of 150 metres) and maneuver into tricky areas. He wanted to put Rover through his ropes. Speare is an AIMS veteran, with 16 years experience cruising the reef. "When I started at AIMS I would be told: Go and survey the Great Barrier Reef’, so I’ve pretty much dived everywhere up and down these waters," he said.

Cappo and Speare have worked together for 13 years at AIMS. Cappo was recently Speare’s best man at his wedding. A virtual Fish WonderMan, Cappo analyses and documents each fish he sees on the BRUVS. He rattles off their Latin names with ease. Engrossed in the footage, he is modest about his skills. "It’s what I’m good at," he said without removing his eyes from the screen. "Look at that one, you never find big ones like that. We need to get the ROV down there to find out what else there is."

Locating wrecks is not normally associated with AIMS, but wrecks are of interest to scientists because of the artificial reefs they create. "Artificial reefs often hold a lot more fish and features than other reefs," said Speare. "We need to look at how these communities are held together." On this occasion, it was important for the scientists to locate the bomber and capture it on videotape, to validate the use of videography as a scientific tool.

Hence the pressure on Mclean to fix Rover quickly, particularly once the BRUVS camera had rediscovered the plane wreck, marking its exact co-ordinates. The damage to the robot’s floats was significant, but Mclean believed he could still drive Rover if he dropped some weights.

Like Dirk Pitt, he wanted another go:

‘Drop a maker buoy over the side and we’ll call it a day.’ ‘Tomorrow morning we’ll go down and see what we can find inside the wreck.’ Steiger sat there, shaking his head and repeating, ‘It’s not supposed to be here….’ Pitt smiled. ‘Apparently the good colonel refuses to trust his own eyes.’ ‘It’s not that,’ Giordino said. ‘Steiger has this psychological problem.’ ‘Problem?’ ‘Yeah, he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus.’’

On Saturday, our final day at sea, the crew got up early to give Rover one more try at discovering the wreck. With fingers crossed, the ROV was loaded into the water. We held our breath watching the monitor, hoping Rover would finally reveal the history that lay below. Initially, the images on the monitor were clear and static free. Then a small flicker, followed by visual noise. A bad connection? Suddenly, as quickly as Rover had come to life, he began to slow down. The depth gauge malfunctioned, then the compass, and finally the picture.

For now, Rover was "dead" – a sad ending to our search for the plane wreck. The AIMS team left Robbery Shoals with only the images recorded by the stationary BRUV camera. Still, the scientists were philosophical about Rover’s failures, well used to the perils of research at sea. "Equipment fails," said Speare. "We’ll be back."

After all, Dirk Pitt, in addition to his near-death experiences, has endured his fair share of malfunctions ...