Developing a swarm of low-cost floaters to acoustically perform in-situ fish stock assessment in remote areas
The Schmidt Marine Fisheries Initiative SOUND project studies in-situ ocean monitoring which enables tracking of marine life via low-cost floaters that drift with the water current with one actuated degree of freedom – depth control, while autonomously performing acoustic fish detection and fish biomass assessment activities (for instance, spreading the swarm throughout the water column versus focusing the entire swarm at a specific depth). The aim is to achieve simple deployment requiring no additional permits, non-invasive aquaculture support, assisting fishermen and reducing bycatch – especially in remote and developing areas. The project’s technological contribution lies in two inter-related areas: underwater acoustics and marine robotics, with a novel underwater acoustic scheme for fish stock measurement that will combine probabilistic analysis with machine learning integrated into a novel design of an autonomous low-power and low-cost floater as a platform for marine exploration, resulting in a TRL6 prototype for selected pilot tests. This lecture focuses on the development of initial floater prototypes and field trials which took place in Šibenik, Croatia and Eilat, Israel.