Life-saving discoveries can trace their roots back to Yellowstone’s underwater thermal activity, and more discoveries are hoped to be found with the help of a new robot. All the project’s team needs is a kick start to the tune of about $100,000.

The Global Foundation for Ocean Exploration — led by a part-time Montana resident who’s probed Yellowstone Lake’s depths for decades — is trying to raise $100,000 for the new robot on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter.

Global Foundation for Ocean Exploration founder and president Dave Lovalvo says the new machine would be a “second-to-none” resource for documenting Yellowstone Lake. Lovalvo said it can also help people understand the importance of the lake’s unique ecosystem.

“It is our obligation to understand it,” Lovalvo says of Yellowstone, in a video accompanying the Kickstarter campaign. “Because the only way to protect it is to understand it.”

Lovalvo first set eyes on the park in 1985 and found many new thermal features below the lake’s surface.

“I took one look out and I just kind of looked out and I said, ‘I’m never leaving this place,’” he says in the video.

“Knowing what we know about life in extreme environments, the microscopic organisms that thrive in temperatures that exceed body temperature, it was a fascinating place to do research because you never know what you will find there,” Lovalvo told the Tribune.

Three decades later, he’s explored places all over the world, but he still spends part of his time in southwest Montana.

A robot was what first brought Lovalvo to the park, having been hired by the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to deploy and pilot his machine in Yellowstone Lake.

He went on to spend some 28 years exploring, filming and mapping the lake and says he fell in love with it right away.

Even with the 1985 robot’s low-resolution cameras, “the images were just stunning,” Lovalvo says in the video.

During those years, Lovalvo and his team have been limited on the amount of time they have on the lake each year since underwater studies began 30 years ago, he said.

“You can’t possibly see every place that you know there is probably interesting activity,” Lovalvo said.

The reason progress had been slow is two-fold. First, the boat being used was not designed for the old robot, and secondly because of technological limitations from the old equipment.

The deeper spots of the lake were harder to reach because the crew was using an old Park Service boat and they had to anchor off the bow and stern while looking for thermal features and sampling the hot water.

“If the wind came, it would drag you away,” Lovalvo said. “But this time we are building a new boat that will be brought into the lake in early June and that is specially designed to handle the robot.”

The new 40-foot boat has dynamic positioning, similar to what vessels use in very deep ocean exploration. The thruster system is tied to the boat’s GPS so all the crew will have to do is enter coordinates and the boat will remain in place.

“It is like autopilot on a plane,” Lovalvo said.

The yet-to-be constructed robot will be far more advanced, with high definition recording equipment. The foundation is naming it “Yogi,” in honor of the famed cartoon bear from the fictional Jellystone National Park.

Public fundraising is only one part of the effort to make Yogi a reality. Yellowstone National Park, the Yellowstone Association and Montana State University are among the entities lending help. Other institutions have chipped in parts and schematics, and all the dollars raised on Kickstarter will be matched by a private contributor.

“This is the kind of money we need to build this robot and put it on Yellowstone Lake and make it something that will serve the purpose of protecting the park for future generations,” Lovalvo says in the video.

As with all Kickstarter projects, donors can receive various rewards, depending on how much money they give. That ranges from getting a digital poster of the robot for $25 to joining the research team and robot on Yellowstone Lake for $10,000.

“We are just trying to offset some of the costs because this is extremely expensive,” Lovalvo said. “We want people to understand the value of what we do and help out if interested.”

The Global Foundation for Ocean Exploration’s Kickstarter pitch suggests the microbial life at the bottom of the lake could hold information about the origin of life or new advancements in medicine or biology. The foundation notes one type of bacteria found in a Yellowstone thermal feature — Thermus aquaticus — helped revolutionize the way DNA is decoded.

The microbe credited with sparking the ability for mankind to map the entire human genome was discovered in Lower Geyser Basin at Yellowstone National Park — bringing historically unprecedented discoveries about who we are as a species, and potentially curing diseases as well.

“Because it grew in a very hot environment, it allowed us to do things you normally couldn’t do,” Lovalvo said. “It is an exciting place, and the lake bottom is fascinating — you never know what you will see and that is the beauty of it.”

The discoveries made thanks to this one Yellowstone microbe are currently used in hospitals around the world, he said.

“It is estimated that less than 1 percent of Yellowstone’s microbes have been identified so far, and it’s hard to predict what might be learned from those that have yet to be discovered,” says the pitch. “Many of these unknown species could be at the bottom of Yellowstone Lake right now, but the National Park Service does not have the tools needed to thoroughly characterize the lake’s deep water ecosystem on their own.”

(In addition to microscopic life, sponges and crustaceans also dwell in the depths.)

Despite being just one of only a few projects to be featured on Kickstarter’s front page and weekly email, only about half of the $100,000 goal had been raised as of Wednesday.

This is the foundation’s first time using a crowd-funding source. Lovalvo said things weren’t looking good for the endeavor since with Kickstarter, it’s all or nothing for the fundraiser.

“They are well known for people selling things, but we went a completely different direction and based it on philanthropy — you have to want to help for a reason other than getting something in return,” Lovalvo said. “We have way too much in it and too many responsibilities to not be doing it, but Kickstarter would take some of the pain off.”

The foundation faces a self-imposed deadline of 10 p.m. on May 4.