71% of the earth surface is covered by water, and resources are extremely rich underwater. Meanwhile ocean is an important field of strategic security of national defense. Marine organism, marine ecology and seabed geological situations in deep sea area play very important role in researches on earth ecology, climate, origin of life and earthquake forecast. However, it is extremely difficult for human being to reach the deep sea area (particularly the gulf deeper than 6,000m), so deep sea science is the weakest but cutting-edge field in research on marine science.

    Underwater optics is one of important approaches for deep sea exploration in the future, and is widely used in underwater information acquisition, transmission and processing. As an important underwater optics research unit, XIOPM conducted research on underwater optics as far back as 1988, and has gathered a batch of excellent talents to carry out original and forward-looking researches on bottlenecks of underwater optics, completed many national major research and development tasks and made remarkable achievements.

    In May 2016, the “Underwater Optics” Summit Forum sponsored by XIOPM was held successfully in Xi’an. The Forum, under the premise clarifying national strategic demands in the field of underwater optics, made in-depth exploration of demands for underwater optics application and the future development. 

    In June 2016, XIOPM and Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology jointly established the “Joint Marine Optics Lab”, which will focus on underwater optical imaging, optical detection of underwater targets and underwater optical sensor as well as other engineering and technical fields, rely on the Qingdao National Laboratory and carry out wide range of cooperation, to realize multi-discipline integration and technical complementarity and lift our country’s R&D strength and domesticization rate in marine engineering equipment. Founding of the “Joint Marine Optics Lab” marks establishment of a top-level platform of optics and optical technology under the national marine strategy. 

    In July 2016, Wu Guojun Team of XIOPM was approved to undertake the sub-topic “Research on Deep-sea High-definition Vision Observation Recording and Live System” under the project of “Research and Sea Test of Full-Sea-Depth Automatic Remotely-operated Vehicle (ARV)”. Completion of the project will make China really realize all-range deep seabed scientific expedition and exploration.