Robot sent to examine moss

PORTLAND – A robot submarine once used to retrieve drowning victims from the Colorado River will be deployed next week to investigate fields of green moss that thrive in Crater Lake in Southern Oregon.

Scientists don’t know much about the moss but think it could serve as a long-term indicator of the lake’s health.

“It’s obviously significant because the biomass of the moss probably dwarfs all the other life in the lake put together,” said Mark Buktenica, a biologist with Crater Lake National Park.

The moss lives 65 feet to 400 deep in the lake, the nation’s deepest at 1,943 feet.

Bob Collier, an Oregon State University oceanographer, said the moss doesn’t affect the lake’s clarity and might “date back to the earliest days of the lake,” 7,700 years ago. The trunk-sized submersible to be deployed Monday is called a Phantom. It has a camera and an arm to grab samples. The 200-pound, remote-controlled vehicle is from Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Utah and Arizona.

A one-person submarine explored the lake floor in 1988 and 1989. Buktenica and Collier, and OSU oceanographer Jack Dymond spotted the moss during those dives.

Dymond, who died in 2003, described the moss in the 1980s as being a foot in height. “It’s a spectacular scene,” he said. “It looks like a grassy field.”