Ropeless Fishing

problem

North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) are endangered large whales distributed along the East coast of the United States and Canada. Despite international protection since 1935, right whales have been slow to recover from whaling due to entanglement in fishing gear and ship collisions. Conservation efforts have included vessel speed restrictions, modification of international shipping lanes, aircraft and vessel monitoring surveys , right whale alerts to mariners, the Mandatory Ship Reporting system, stranding response, and outreach efforts. Despite these efforts, North Atlantic right whales are in decline with only an estimated 409 individuals remaining. One proposed solution to saving them from extinction is the development of ropeless technology in order to remove the threat posed by the vertical lines (i.e. rope) used to fish pots and traps. A major obstacle to moving this effort forward is the development of an affordable system to locate and track gear deployments in the ocean, and make their locations known to the fishers as well as enforcement agencies and nearby vessels

solution

We are looking for a solution to ropeless gear marking -- for fishers to know the location of fishing gear, both theirs and others, on the sea bottom that is not marked with vertical lines and buoys. This notification must occur with sufficient distance that mobile (e.g., trawl, scallop, dredge) fishermen can alter course to avoid the unmarked gear. People have been placing scientific equipment and fishing gear on the bottom of the ocean for ages but the use of buoys to mark the gear poses an entanglement risk for marine mammals and sea turtles. While technologies have been developed for both placing gear on the bottom without buoys to the surface and retrieving the gear, there is a potential that fishermen or others who are unaware of the location of the subsurface gear will inadvertently tow through the gear or place their gear over the unmarked gear. The development of an affordable system to alert other fishermen to the presence of gear on the bottom within a minimum of two nautical miles, and to send and receive a signal through the air-water interface at low cost with something rugged enough to withstand submergence in salt water is needed to help reduce conflicts by people inadvertently towing up or fishing over other’s gear. We are not seeking the design of the trap or the lift mechanism at this time -- merely the gear marking and database communication components.

 

approach

NOAA has recently signed an interagency agreement with NASA’s Center for Collaborative Excellence (CoECI) enabling streamlined access to crowdsourcing platforms. The Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation collaborates with innovators across NASA and the Federal Government to generate ideas and solve important problems by working with global communities via the NASA Tournament Lab. This project to crowdsource technology solutions to boost the development of ropeless fishing is the first project to utilize this new interagency agreement and the search is underway on the platform Yet2.

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