A fascinating article by CNN about a robotic fish named “Eve” that swings its silicone tail side to side, as it glides fluidly through Lake Zurich’s chilly water, where it is being tested by SURF-eDNA. The student-led group has spent the past two years building a school of soft robotic fish – of which Eve is the latest.

“By making Eve look like a fish, we are able to be minimally invasive into the ecosystem that we’re surveying,” master’s student Dennis Baumann told CNN, adding that the biomimetic design should prevent other fish or sea life from being startled by her presence. “We can mix, we can mingle in the ecosystem,” he added.

Eve’s ability to camouflage itself as a fish isn’t its only utility. The autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) is also equipped with a camera to film underwater, and sonar, which when paired with an algorithm, allows it to avoid obstacles.

The AUV also features a filter to collect DNA from the environment, known as “eDNA,” as it swims. The eDNA particles can be sent to a laboratory for sequencing to determine what species live in the body of water.

“All of the animals that are in the environment, they shed their DNA, so there’s DNA floating around that we can find,” Martina Lüthi, a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich, told CNN.

The students hope that Eve will give scientists a more detailed picture of the oceans and their inhabitants.