ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT
April • 2022
Could Robots Be the Key to Saving Our Seas? The oceans are full of information—from data that can help protect at-risk species, to the most fuel-efficient routes for ships, to measuring changes in the oceans so that scientists can better understand the effects of climate change. However, much of the ocean’s data remains unknown—it is estimated that more than 80 percent of our oceans are unmapped and unexplored. A lifelong adventurer and the first woman to row across the Atlantic Ocean from mainland to mainland, Julie Angus co-founded Open Oceans Robotics to help explore the unexplored using autonomous energy-harvesting boats equipped with sensors and cameras. These boats, produced by Open Ocean Robotics, are used to make oceanic observations and instantly relay them safely and efficiently, transforming the way we explore and understand our oceans. “My time on the ocean made me realize that human-less boats could do many of the tasks currently being done with big ships at a fraction of the cost, more safely, and with a vastly smaller environmental footprint,” Angus shares. “Our robotic boats do just that, collecting data necessary to protect and understand the oceans, which includes protecting against illegal fishing, monitoring endangered whale populations, and mapping the seafloor.” Through these uncrewed boats that are operated remotely, Open Ocean Robotics is creating a digital ocean and allowing scientists to see the ocean in a transformative way, from the seafloor to the surface and across millions of miles. “Creating a digital ocean is about collecting data autonomously through technology like our robot boat Data Xplorer,” says Angus, who works with her husband Colin, CTO and co-founder of Open Ocean Robotics, to produce the vessels. “Our boats can travel the ocean for months at a time powered only by the sun and send back the collected
© PHOTOS COURTESY OF OPEN OCEAN ROBOTICS
data by satellite. We can also work with submersible drones that collect underwater data or aerial drones that take measurements from the sky. This gives us the ability to create a 3D picture of what is going on in the ocean, from the seafloor to the sky.” Conventional vessels can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $80,000 a day to operate offshore. Removing just one offshore vessel from the ocean has the same effect as reducing the emissions of 100 cars for a year. These 250-pound unsinkable boats are doing the same jobs as the bigger boats but at a fraction of the cost and even less of a negative impact on the oceans. Not just that, but being unmanned means these boats can trek into parts of the ocean that are harder to access with a ship, sailing into the biggest seas and braving the nastiest storms.
Oceans are heavily impacted by climate change, and this manifests through sea level increases, acidification, and changes in temperature and currents, which affects the health of marine species, ecosystems, and our coastal communities. We depend on our oceans for food, transportation, communication, oxygen, so we must do more to protect them, and to do that, autonomous technology is our best bet—but what we can’t see, we can’t change. “If we don’t understand the impacts we’re making to our oceans, we’ll never change our behavior because we won’t know that we’re making a difference,” Angus shares. With Open Ocean’s autonomous boats, the changes in our oceans can be measured and researched so that we can better understand how to respond. And the benefits of
mapping the oceans don’t stop there. Over the last 25 years, melting Arctic sea ice has tripled traffic in the northern oceans, but only one percent of the Canadian Arctic is charted to modern standards. With Open Oceans’ USVs, more of the Arctic can be mapped out in a way that is not only safer for crews but faster and more cost-effective overall. Last year, Open Ocean managed to secure funding that would help them improve the autonomous solar-powered vessel, which works to police illegal fishing in marine protected areas—a problem that costs nearly $23 billion and accounts for 30 percent of fish. On top of that, illegal fishing threatens the food supply for coastal communities and the 2.6 billion people worldwide for whom fish is an essential fixture of their diet. It also jeopardizes the estimated 520
million people whose livelihoods depend on our oceans. However, because illegal fishing happens in remote parts of the ocean, it’s incredibly hard to police. Tackling the challenge of illegal fishing by having something that can go out and monitor those areas, Open Ocean Robotics is making waves in combatting issues that are putting our oceans at risk and contributing to the empowerment of those who rely on the oceans for food and income. Considering how deeply the oceans impact billions of lives across the globe, the effects of ocean collapse cannot be overstated. “The number one thing I want people to know about our oceans is that they are vital to our planet’s health and our economy, and if we don’t ensure their sustainability, we will all lose.” This matters to us all. It’s time we pay attention to our oceans.
California Conservationists and Farmers Unite to Protect Salmon DANIEL TROTTA AND NATHAN FRANDINO
In an experiment a decade in the making, biologists are releasing hatchery salmon onto flooded Northern California rice fields, seeking to replenish endangered fish species while benefiting the farmers’ business model. While environmentalists are often pitted against agribusiness in California’s water wars, conservation scientists and rice farmers are working together, trying to reclaim the great flood plains of the Sacramento River for salmon habitat. Their task is daunting. California’s wetlands have all but disappeared, converted into farms and cities in one of the great engineering feats, or environmental crimes, of the 20th century. Now, for the cost and inconvenience of flooding their fields, rice farmers are earning goodwill and betting that a healthy salmon population will avoid new regulations to protect wildlife and keep adequate water flowing. In recent years, biologists discovered that as rice straw decomposes in flooded fields, it creates a broth rich in fish food— they call it “zoop soup.” “The zooplankton are so big and they’re so juicy, it’s like filet mignon,” said Andrew Rypel, a professor of fish ecology at the University of California Davis and lead investigator on the project. After fattening up on their
zooplankton, the salmon return to the river, swim downstream and beneath the Golden Gate Bridge on their way to sea, returning years later to spawn the next generation. The university’s researchers have joined the California Rice Commission, the conservation group California Trout and the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the project, seeking to reverse the trend toward dwindling fish
are under cultivation today. Though the natural state will never be restored, the flood plain can reconnect to the river. Though the experiment has placed salmon on small parcels before, this winter marks the first time it has been tried on a large scale on a working rice farm. Conservation scientists hope to replicate the model on more farms in years to come. The salmon project is using
389 acres on a pair of rice farms at the Sutter Bypass near Robbins, about 30 miles northwest of Sacramento. One farm is intentionally flooded with water and planted with hatchery fish, enabling the biologists to study their progress and tag some with microchips to track their movements. A second farm is being prepared just in case the Sacramento overflows this year, delivering naturally spawned salmon. The project was inspired by changes that turned flooded rice farms into habitats for migrating ducks, geese, and other waterfowl within the Pacific Flyway, a north-south corridor linking North and South America. California rice farmers traditionally burned leftover rice straw after the autumn harvest until a 1991 state law banned the practice, largely in response to human complaints about smoke. When farmers started using water to break down rice straw, the smoke cleared, and the birds started coming back. Though no longer pristine wetlands, 90 percent of which have been lost in California, the rice fields enticed enough migratory birds to darken the sky, their honks once again bombinating across the valley. “We don’t want to just sit silently while extinctions happen,” Rypel said.
JORDAN COLBY, A RESEARCHER WITH UC DAVIS, MEASURES BABY SALMON IN A FLOODED RICE FIELD © REUTERS/NATHAN FRANDINO
—Reuters
populations as a result of human re-engineering of the state’s waterways and, in recent years, extreme drought exacerbated by climate change. Before industrialization, the northern end of California’s Central Valley was a mileswide flood plain straddling the Sacramento River—a natural feeding ground for fish. That land is ideal for farming rice, and about 500,000 acres
