Figuring out where to designate marine protected areas so fish populations can bounce back sounds simple. Heck, we just found water on the moon! But it's no easy task, which is why we're going to need water-ready robots.
In California, protected areas need to be places where fish larvae have a shot at making it. Ships go one way, making it challenging to gather complete data on the coastal currents fish larvae ride. Now, with $913,000 from the National Science Foundation, scientists at UC San Diego's Scripps Institute of Oceanography plan to deploy a crew of autonomous underwater explorers (AUEs) to be their eyes and ears.
"There are all sorts of fish that have been depleted and we’d like to know where the baby fish can settle so we can create happy areas for them to grow up," says Jules Jaffe, a research oceanographer on the Scripps team.
Larger soccer-ball sized AUEs will triangulate numerous smaller, drifting ones that can follow the larvae along the currents. The littler guys will essentially be cell phones with GPS in a bottle. Even the small ones are designed to be around 1.5 liters in size and alien-looking so Jaffe doesn't expect them to be mistaken for prey. The AUEs will be sent out from small boats for sea testing in about six months.
Getting the public excited about fish larvae is admittedly tough, but these robotic explorers could also tell us exactly where red tides are, tracking them in 3-D--and that's an environmental menace beach-goers know all too well.
Image: Rendering of the autonomous underwater explorers. Credit: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.
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