Quick trivia: which AUV is credited with the first fully autonomous hydrothermal vent discovery, and what was its depth rating? I’m tuning a 600 kHz DVL to an INS for a 4,000 m window off San Diego this week, thinking about those white‑knuckle lawnmower runs over black smokers that wrote our playbook.
ABE (Autonomous Benthic Explorer) gets the nod for the first fully autonomous vent find, depth-rated to 6,000 m. With that 600 kHz DVL over a 4,000 m window, run a 200 m out‑and‑back at <60 m altitude before the ‘lawnmower’ to lock DVL‑INS yaw/scale so plume water‑track dropouts don’t smear the nav; if you can swap to 300 kHz you’ll buy some altitude margin.