Studying the deep sea is really tough because of the extreme pressure and total darkness, which makes it hard to gather data on marine life. On top of that, bottom trawling can easily wreck fragile deep-sea ecosystems. To fix this, TORI built a deep-sea eDNA sampler. It's designed to sit on the ocean floor and gives us a highly efficient, low-impact way to schedule sampling without disturbing the environment.

The core system is a custom benthic lander that automatically pumps, filters, and preserves seawater. It offers two modules: a standard version for PCR amplicon analysis to identify specific species, and a high-volume version for metagenomics, filtering massive amounts of water to capture low-concentration DNA for broader biodiversity research.

Serving marine engineering, environmental monitoring equipment manufacturers, and the renewable energy (offshore wind) ecosystem, this initiative establishes a standardized technological platform for long-term deep-sea observation, providing internationally competitive, locally produced equipment.