The first deep-sea webcam was successfully installed on the floor of California's Monterey Bay Wednesday, and Wired Science brought it to you live via Twitter and Flickr.

The Eye-in-the-Sea camera will allow marine biologists Erika Raymond and Edith Widder, pictured above, to unobtrusively observe organisms in the deep ocean. In this gallery, you can watch as the system is flawlessly installed in the bay, and within a week, you'll be able to use their camera to peer into the deep.

"That was an extremely rare experience, something that complex working the first time," Widder, a MacArthur "genius award" grantee and founder of the Ocean Research and Conservation Association. "Murphy took the day off."

The remote monitoring system will take video and various scientific readings 24 hours a day, sending them via the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's new undersea data network, the Monterey Accelerated Research System, aka MARS.

At a time when everywhere scientists look in the oceans, they see mounting problems, the Eye-in-the-Sea-MARS combo will provide scientists with much-needed data on how changes in shallower waters are changing the nature of the bottom of the sea.

When we arrived at the dock in Moss Landing, it was still dark, but the bay was waking up. Seagulls flew overhead and sea lions barked in the distance. The expedition left on the Point Lobos research vessel at 7 a.m., just as the sun rose.

@alexismadrigal: A little good luck charm for the sailors on the MBARI boat. Olive Oil. 7:00 AM

Usually, in order to see sea creatures, humans take manned or robotic submarines into the depths, pouring bright light into the ocean. That scares away some animals and changes the behavior of those that are left. The new camera, pictured at right, however, uses specially tuned red light, which most of the organisms at that depth can't see.

That could provide Widder and Raymond with fascinating information about the bioluminescent creatures of the deep. They could — and probably will — discover wholly new organisms. At the very least, they'll get better data on just how many living things there are 2,800 feet below the surface.

In years past, Widder would dive in a one-woman submarine into the deep. She'd maneuver into position and then turn off her engines, floating in the deep. When her craft would bump a creature, the creature would light up. She called the experience "the most beautiful light show in the world."

Now, that beautiful, labor-intensive and limited process will be replaced by the system that she co-designed. To maneuver it into place, the crew attached the camera to their robotic submarine, the Ventana.

@alexismadrigal: We have pushed into open water. The engines roar, drowning out the gulls. The power plant recedes. The sun is up. 7:14 AM

The crew put the Ventana through its paces on deck. At one point, it switched on and its camera raised up to peer at its examiners. The trickiest part was ballasting the sub properly to carry the weight of the Eye-in-the-Sea. They wanted a slow, steady descent.

@alexismadrigal:

The crew is loose, but this mission is going to be tough. Someone just said, "I don't want to hear any talk of celebrating. Yet." 8:44 AM

The sub is lowered into and out of the water with a crane. First, the sub, tethered to the boat and the Eye-in-the-Sea, went in. Curious dolphins investigated, swimming around the sub and peering into its cameras. The team maneuvered it away from the boat and then the crane lifted the camera into the sea. Quickly, it dropped below the sub and began its descent.

@alexismadrigal: Sub at 830m. 50 more to go. Dolphins off the bow; they're common. The real fun is humpbacks scratching their backs on the hull, I'm told. 10:46 AM

The control room on the Point Lobos is full of monitors displaying the live video feed from the sub's camera. As they lowered the camera into the deep, they pointed the camera straight down, so you can see the camera's tether in the monitors.

@alexismadrigal: 875 meters below me, a robotic arm attached to a sub is attempting to plug a camera to a network that will send data 40 miles away. Humans. 11:25 AM

The sub's operators lowered the EITS to the ocean floor so softly that the sand hardly stirred. It was a rousing success, but the team still had to unspool the orange glorified-ethernet cable and plug it into the data network.

@alexismadrigal: The orange network cable is tied up with thin rope. The robotic arm's clasp looks like it's trying to untie a shoe lace when it tugs. 12:00 PM

After carefully untying the thin rope that held the data cable in place, the team used the sub's robotic arm to pull the connector a few dozen meters to the MARS network hub. The plug-ins have special oil-filled chambers that clean the pins to ensure a clean connection. The MARS hub was installed late last year, but it's already become part of the ocean ecosystem: Note the fish in the bottom-left.

@alexismadrigal: The Eye-in-the-Sea is hooked to the network! One huge plug into another, all remote. It was like watching a pro gamer, except it was real. 12:37 PM

The Eye-in-the-Sea, installed at nearly 3,000 feet of depth and illuminated from above by the submarine's lights, lives up to its name.

@alexismadrigal: My brain and legs are having a vigorous disagreement about whether or not I am still on a boat. It's like hallucinating. 8:01 PM

See Also:

WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal's Twitter , Google Reader feed, and project site, Inventing Green: the lost history of American clean tech; Wired Science on Facebook.