SAN DIEGO—When your “broadcast studio” is 5,000 meters below the ocean surface, you have to get creative with your camera technology. That’s what our combined teams at DeepSea Power & Light and Ocean Exploration Trust (OET) did on a deep-sea expedition, modifying Sony’s HDC-P50 POV camera to explore and live-stream UHD content from the ocean depths of the Cook Islands.
Each OET expedition is focused on scientific exploration, visiting never-before-seen parts of the planet, documenting ecosystems in poorly understood ocean regions, discovering new species and sharing this data with the world. A core part of OET’s mission is education and outreach, using the excitement of discovery to inspire the next generation of explorers.
Extreme Tech
Sending exploration tools to depths of 5,000 meters or more requires a unique set of hardware that can survive and operate in extreme temperatures and low light. Space constraints further complicate mounting cameras on remotely operated underwater vehicles and controlling them from confined workspaces aboard an exploration vessel.
In 2019, DeepSea partnered with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) to design a camera system that could deliver studio-level imaging quality in these conditions, an idea first championed by MBARI’s Mark Chaffey. The team sought a camera capable of UHD resolution, HDR and native 12G outputs to integrate with standard broadcast workflows. The Sony HDC-P50 hit the sweet spot for all criteria.
What sealed the deal was the camera’s modular design. DeepSea completely deconstructed and re-engineered its chassis to integrate the HDC-P50’s features into the MxD SeaCam, a broadcast-
grade 4K subsea imaging system with a ruggedized pressure housing designed for deep‑ocean exploration, scientific research and underwater filmmaking.
Building the MxD SeaCam around Sony’s proven compact broadcast camera helps us deliver the same imaging performance and control as a full-sized studio system but hardened for thousands of underwater pressure cycles. In 2025, OET and DeepSea brought the camera to sea on the Exploration Vessel Nautilus and tested it under real-world conditions.
A key objective of the Cook Islands expedition was to explore the South Pacific region’s biological and geological diversity and provide information about these environments to the Cook Islands Government.
ROV-based (remotely operated vehicle) surveys are best suited for filming macro fauna, which is everything large enough to see with the naked eye, or about a few centimeters in size. During the Cook Islands expedition, the camera’s combination of UHD resolution with a faster frame rate to capture more detail per second brought out the finer details of organisms that scientists need to identify species and examine geological patterns. Color is also important, and this HDR system gives us a richer range of hues and spectral information about underwater habitats and environments.
High-Resolution Science
The HDC-P50 will remain an essential part of DeepSea’sMxD system and the team will test and evaluate newer Sony camera versions as our organizations continue to advance deep-sea floor imaging. Only about 28% of the seafloor has been mapped at high resolution. We know more details about the moon’s surface than we do about the ocean floor.
The ocean contains about 99% of our planet’s habitable volume, yet roughly 90% of the species that live in it have yet to be identified. The visual information we gather with Sony tools is used for high-quality broadcast viewing and permanently stored in public repositories where it remains available to scientists and anyone interested in researching and learning in the future.
For many scientists, the complexity and cost of at-sea research limit their access to the sea floor. With advanced imaging solutions like the Sony HDC-P50 and DeepSea MxD SeaCam as well as OET’s telepresence outreach, researchers worldwide can unlock new ultra-high-resolution views of the deep. The better the quality of the data we can deliver to our audiences, the better they can do their jobs.
More information is available on Sony’s website.
Dave Robertson is a 40-plus-year broadcast engineer and owner of Robertson Technical Services LLC.
