Despite science’s best efforts to explore the ocean, the vast bulk of its depths remains unseen. The seas add up to more than 1.3 billion cubic kilometers—enough to fill a sphere one tenth as wide as the earth—and expensive tools such as depth-defying submarines and swimming drones would have to hit the waves in huge numbers to cover even a fraction of that water. But living creatures such as moon jellyfish already pervade the oceans, and now researchers at the California Institute of Technology and Stanford University are trying to turn these flimsy organisms into controllable cyborgs.
Image: Artist’s rendering of moon jellyfish augmented with prosthetic devices that boost their speed. Credit: Rebecca Konte Caltech
