How fishermen can crowdsource coastal oceanographic data

1. © 2017 Aquatec Group
Fisherman Oceanographers
Andy Smerdon – CEO, Aquatec Group
Ocean Observation & Sensing
Thursday 2 November 2017

2. © 2016 Aquatec Group
Overview
• Introduction to Aquatec Group
• Oceanography
• Fishermen
• Fishermen Oceanographers
• A Fisherman’s Oceanographic Instrument
• Field Data Examples

3. Aquatec Group Ltd
• Founded in 1990
• Headquarters close to
London Heathrow
airport
• Design and
manufacture all
products and
engineered solutions
• ISO9001 - ISO14001
BS OHSAS 18001
• Products sold
worldwide: >75%
export

4. Subsea Solutions
Consultancy ● Measurement ● Communication ● Insight
• Areas of Expertise
– Sensing underwater
– Data acquisition,
processing
and storage
– Through- and above-water
communication
– Subsea packaging
• Technologies
– Acoustics
– Optics
– Cathodic Protection
– Temperature &
Pressure
– Motion and Attitude

5. Metocean Instruments…
AVAILABLE FROM P-NAV
• AQUAlogger 520
– Pressure / Depth / Tide / Temperature
– Low Cost
– Contactless Reader
• AQUAlogger 310TY
– Turbidity
– Pressure / Depth / Tide / Temperature
– More later…
• AQUAscat 1000
– Multi-Frequency Sediment Profiler
– Pressure / Depth / Tide / Temperature
– More later…
小型记录器
光学浊度记录器
声学悬浮沉淀物分析器

6. Instruments Featured at OI China
OI CHINA: QINGDAO 1-3 NOVEMBER 2017
• AQUAmodem Op2
– Optical Communications Link
– Communication via ROV
• AQUAlogger 530
– Pressure, Depth, Temperature
光学调制解调器
温度和深度记录仪

7. Instruments for Offshore Oil & Gas
PIPELINE HYDROTEST AND LEAK DETECTION
泄漏检测水压试验

8. © 2016 Aquatec Group
Oceanography

9. © 2016 Aquatec Group
Oceanography is EXPENSIVE !
• Research vessel costs $10k - $20k per day
• Few vessels in operation
• Few cruises per year
• This means:
– Sparse data
– Spatially & temporally under-sampled
• Drifting floats limited to deep water
• Satellite observation limited to surface waters
• Lack of knowledge in coastal regions especially near bed

10. © 2016 Aquatec Group
Fishermen

11. Fishermen are EVERYWHERE!
AND THEY NEED DATA
• Fishermen regularly place fishing gear around the
coastal seas and oceans…
– Seabed (crab/lobster pots)
– Mid-water (static nets, long lines, purse seines)
– Transects (benthic & pelagic trawls)
• ... and they retrieve it
• They need to know:
– Sea bed temperatures (e.g. for migration of lobsters & crabs)
– Thermocline (e.g. for residence depth of pelagic species)
• Data from their own efforts is helpful but…
• Aggregated data from whole
fleet is even better

12. © 2016 Aquatec Group
Fishermen Oceanographers
OCEANOGRAPHY + FISHERMEN =

13. © 2016 Aquatec Group
Initial Motivation

14. © 2016 Aquatec Group
Initial Motivation
• Long term coastal seabed
temperature
– Almost a century of observations
– Shelf-wide coverage only a few
times a year.
• Millions of lobster traps
• 2001: NEFSC began attaching
simple temperature and depth
loggers
• Dramatic increase in spatial and
temporal resolution of
measurements

15. © 2016 Aquatec Group
Need for Real-Time
• Over 5 million records to date, but…
• Data recovery lengthy and delayed
– Instruments recovered and exchanged on
month/season time scale
• Fishermen need current data to select optimum
fishing ground
• NOAA/NEFSC commissioned Aquatec to
develop new temperature and depth recorder
– Must deliver data to fishermen immediately fishing
gear surfaces
– Near real time data transfer to NOAA
– Data anonymized &
fed back

16. © 2016 Aquatec Group
A Fisherman’s
Oceanographic Instrument

17. © 2016 Aquatec Group
Instrument Concept

18. © 2016 Aquatec Group
Instrument Concept
• AQUAlogger 530WTD
– Standalone temperature and depth logger
– Use on commercial fishing vessels
– Stores data and displays graphs automatically via wireless
technology
– No cabled connection
• System comprises:
– Data logger
– Reader unit, connected to PC

19. © 2016 Aquatec Group
Instrument Concept
• Instrument designed for use on commercial vessels
• Durable and shock-tested
• Can be attached to lobster/crab pots, nets, trawls, etc
• If there is line of sight with reader, logger does not need
to be disconnected to download the data.

20. © 2016 Aquatec Group
Instrument Concept
• Triggered to start and stop collecting data at set depth or
time.

21. © 2016 Aquatec Group
Instrument Concept
• When retrieved from water, automatically transmits
collected data to reader
– (line of sight and <50m)
• Data automatically processed
• Graph presented on the
connected computer
• From start of data transfer to
presentation of graph in
minutes
• Data automatically transferred to Cloud server or hosted
FTP for automated processing
when available

22. © 2016 Aquatec Group
Field Data Examples

23. © 2016 Aquatec Group
NOAA Fisheries Observations
• Nov 7: trap dropped
to 317m for some
hours…
• …before being lifted
to 300m after
dragging in a storm
• Smaller oscillations in
depth show tidal
variations
• While water level
may not affect
fishing, temperature
oscillations could
have an influence

24. © 2016 Aquatec Group
NOAA Oceanographic Observations
• Neap to spring cycle
• ~1m variation at high tide.
• First 3 days show minimal
temperature variation with
tides
• End of month shows
much larger variation.
• High tide peaks
correspond with
temperature peaks
• Maximum difference
between high & low tide of
0.8°F

25. © 2016 Aquatec Group
NOAA Model Improvement
• Key benefit of additional
data is improvement of
models
• Models generally perform
well at surface (more data
to validate and calibrate)
• Performance at depth less
reliable
– More data helps to
improve models (right)

26. © 2016 Aquatec Group
UK Fisheries Observations
LADY MAUREEN - TRAWLER

27. © 2016 Aquatec Group
UK Fisheries Observations
LADY MAUREEN - TRAWLER

28. © 2016 Aquatec Group
Web Portal
DATA TRANSMITTED AUTOMATICALLY TO AQUATEC WEB PORTAL

29. © 2016 Aquatec Group
Summary

30. © 2016 Aquatec Group
A Model for Oceanographic Institutes
and Fisheries Bodies
• Field-proven, commercially available technology, both as fishing aid
and scientific instrument.
• Software allows user to control manual interaction, so suitable as
scientific instrument or for use on vessels of opportunity
• Data is available to view as soon as the instrument is retrieved:
– Clear benefits to the vessel
– Increased incentive to participate.
• Low-cost, precision instrument to gather data from commercial and
scientific vessels
• Depending on sampling regime and frequency of download, battery
life should be several years.
• Cost per data point collected during this time is tiny

31. © 2016 Aquatec Group
WORK WITH FISHERMEN…
…AND THEY WILL WORK FOR YOU!
• Any Questions?
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