UHI:  What is it?​

Simplistically, Underwater Hyperspectral Imaging is like a super-powered camera that sees the ocean and all below it, in way more detail than your eyes or a regular camera can, by capturing a unique "fingerprint" of light for everything it looks at. 

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How is it different from a regular camera?

• Your eyes and a regular camera: Only see light in three basic color bands: red, green, and blue. All the colors you see are just combinations of these three.

• A hyperspectral camera: Divides the light spectrum into hundreds of very narrow, continuous bands, extending beyond just visible light into areas like the near-infrared (NIR) spectrum. 
   

The "Spectral Fingerprint"

Every material on Earth—whether it's healthy vegetation, a specific mineral, or even a bruise under an apple's skin—reflects and absorbs light in a unique pattern, a "spectral signature". 

A hyperspectral camera captures this entire signature for every single point (pixel) in an image. This data is collected in what scientists call a "data cube," which has two dimensions for the image itself (length and width) and a third dimension containing the detailed light spectrum for each pixel. 

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Real-World Applications

This ability to "see the invisible" has tons of practical uses on land: 

• Agriculture: Farmers can use it from drones or satellites to check the health of crops, spot diseases before they're visible, or monitor moisture levels in soil.

• Food Quality: It helps sort and inspect food on production lines, finding hidden defects like bruises on fruit or foreign objects in nuts that a normal camera would miss.

• Medicine: Doctors can use it to detect diseases like cancer at an early stage or monitor oxygen levels in tissue during surgery.

And now underwater:

• Geology and Mineralogy: Surveying of mineral sands, manganese nodule fields, sediment composition, and mineral deposits.

• Resource Assessment: Evaluation of seabed minerals and site suitability studies.  Surveys for precise habitat mapping, metric assessments, and temporal change detection across complex seafloor terrains.

• Climate Studies: Monitoring and assessing impacts of climate change on abyssal environments. (e.g. coral reef health)

• Environmental Monitoring: Detection of pollution, environmental impact assessments, and disaster response (e.g., oil spills, submarine landslides).

• Search and Salvage:  Surveys for precise mapping of detritus and wreckage debris location and composition.

• Cultural Heritage Site Surveys: Conduct comprehensive underwater surveys for organic and inorganic materials at historically significant underwater sites.

• Marine Ecology: In-depth exploration of benthic habitats, population surveys, species identification, and behavioral research.

• Underwater Infrastructure Inspection and Maintenance: Identify cracks, biofouling, pitting, etc. on oilrigs, platforms, submerged infrastructure for maintenance and repair.

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