Dave Stevenson may no longer be our deputy reviews editor – in fact he’s currently working for an Australian magazine during a brief pause for breath in his round-the-world gallivanting – but he still keeps in touch, annoyingly.

Usually it’s inane banter, or abuse about how good the weather is in Sydney while we’re mired in London’s perpetual drizzle, but occasionally – very occasionally – he says something of interest. Today was one of those rare occasions. Luckily it’s not about him, but his Dad, a British engineer currently engaged in ground-breaking research.

The BBC and others have been reporting on the new British autonomous robot submarine, Autosub6000. Designed by a British team of engineers at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, it’s a 5.5-metre, 2,800kg autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) capable of diving to 6,000m without human control, and it’s soon to plumb the “lost world” depths of the Cayman Trough, beneath the Caribbean ocean, to explore the world’s deepest volcanoes.

From the RRS James Cook the team will send the UK’s existing remotely-operated vehicle Isis and the new Autosub6000 five kilometres down into the abyss to map the sea-floor, and look for new geological features and marine life. Amongst other things, they hope to discover whether creatures living in the volcanic vents of the Cayman Trough are related to the blind shrimp and unusual mussels of the Pacific, or the bizarre metre-long tubeworms of the Atlantic – or completely different to both.

Dave says, “I knew Dad was heading off to sea this month but I was surprised (to say the least) to find him on the Beeb. It’s rather annoying that he keeps stealing my media-darling thunder like this (Engadget, ZDnet and the BBC in the space of a weekend), but that’s the price of mechanical engineering genius, I suppose.”

It’s a shame none of it rubbed off on his son. PC Pro wishes the best of luck to Pete Stevenson, Professional Mechanical Engineer, and the rest of the intrepid NOC team.

UPDATE: The engineer himself has left a message on Dave’s blog.

“I’m presently on the James Cook off the Canary Islands using Autosub to survey subterranean landslides at 4400m depth, at the same time scientists are collecting cores from the bottom and getting very excited about different types of mud. To be fair, they can look quite pretty.

Dave’s Dad”