"On screen!"

My favorite of the Star Trek series is Voyager, in large part because of the character Kathryn Janeway. She's the captain of a starship that gets hopelessly lost in a far corner of the galaxy, but that woman is fierce. Throughout the series, the Voyager crew encounters alien races that have never seen humans before, and it's a toss-up whether they will be receptive or hostile. Janeway respects all and fears none. Every communication from a foreign leader is met with the same command: "On screen!" - and with the video feed up and running, she negotiates her way through the Delta Quadrant.

One of these days, when my team is anchored over a shipwreck in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, I'm going to stand up, cross my arms, and give my best Janeway impression: "On screen!" At my command, the video feed will turn on and reveal a strange and alien environment, surrounded on all sides by a turbid, viscous matrix. Finned creatures will dart back and forth, seemingly fearful of the bright lights on our landing vehicle. More sessile life forms will shake in the turbulence created by our thrusters. One by one, I will greet them and form alliances with them all.

Well, I might get some strange looks from my shipmates, but it'd be fun.

The view from my seat behind the pilot in our makeshift "van"

Being inside an ROV control van usually makes me feel like I'm in a spaceship. The pilots usually sit in front, with the controls on a table or desk, while the scientists occupy a bench behind them. The front wall of the room is always filled with monitors - a large screen for the main forward-facing camera, plus smaller ones for other cameras facing sideways or backwards that help the pilot navigate. Then there's the ROV's forward-facing sonar and USBL, which helps us tell where the vehicle is in relationship to the boat. Add to that a couple laptops to record the various video feeds, and you get a heck of a lot of screens.

In our case, since we're working from a small boat, we don't have an ROV control "van" in the traditional sense. Most "vans" are shipping containers with all the necessary gear pre-mounted, which sits on the back deck of the ship during the expedition. For us, the "van" is the cabin of the boat. Every day, as soon as we get settled at our study site and the ROV is under the water, we hang black-out curtains and transform the cabin into a floating movie theater.

It's actually kind of fun to see the boat get transformed. One minute, we're out in the sun, deploying anchors and gear, trying not to get our lines tangled. The next, we're Star Trek officers in an enclosed cabin, surveying the underwater world with a remotely-operated robot. To boldly go...