Within the next year, some 150 Cape Cod fishing boats will be equipped with sensors to collect vital information about ocean temperatures and water oxygen levels off the northeast coast of the Atlantic Ocean. The information collected will help researchers better understand the changing conditions of the Atlantic Ocean in the long term, and help fishermen adapt to those conditions in the short term.
In November, the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative’s Innovation Institute awarded a $2 million grant to the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance to equip the boats with smart sensors that can transmit temperature data in real time. They will also be equipped with oxygen-measuring sensors closer to the summer months, when low-oxygen events are most likely to occur. The temperature sensors can measure the various temperatures of the water column as they are dropped into the water.
“Originally fishermen wouldn’t actually see the data until after the fishing season was over.”
The sensors are Bluetooth-enabled, and transmit data to researchers whenever the equipment can ping off cellular towers. Researchers can then translate the data received into forecasts fishermen can use to make more efficient fishing decisions based on ocean conditions. The data also can be immediately viewed by fishermen via onboard devices.
This effort builds on similar, recent efforts by several organizations and universities to outfit Gulf of Maine fishing boats with upgraded temperature and oxygen sensors.
This grant greatly expands the number of boats in southern New England waters which can provide this data, said Mel Sanderson, the Alliance’s chief operating officer. It builds on a pilot program launched during the COVID pandemic to outfit a dozen fishing vessels with sensors, and fine-tune the equipment used.
Some 20 additional vessels have already been equipped with the new equipment, and the goal is to onboard 20 more vessels a month, Sanderson said.
For more than 20 years, researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other institutions have collaborated with fishermen to collect ocean temperature data in New England. But until recently, those efforts were labor-intensive, and the data collected wouldn’t be available until the next fishing season.
Initially, the data was recorded by hand by participating fishermen, and temperature logs were mailed to researchers. Then the info was collected automatically and recorded onto USB drives, but that still required researchers to collect the data and crunch the numbers before it could be accessible to fishermen, Sanderson said.
“Originally fishermen wouldn’t actually see the data until after the fishing season was over,” she said.
Limitations in the sensor technology also meant that earlier generations of the sensors could only be used in fixed fishing gear like lobster traps.
George A. Maynard coordinates the NOAA program that equips fishing vessels with these sensors. He says that cellular and sensor technology improvements have created the opportunity to collect and distribute data remotely and in real time. In addition, researchers can troubleshoot and upgrade the sensors remotely.
Perhaps just as importantly, the sensors have become equipped with GPS technology that allows data to be gathered from moving fishing gear, greatly expanding which vessels can participate in data collection.
“That change in technology allowed us to start working with the mobile gear fleets,” Maynard said. “And so now we’re working with just about every type of fishing gear that’s fished in the northeast commercially.”
This data likely will help fishermen on the East Coast as they grapple with rapidly changing and often unpredictable weather and temperature conditions, said Sanderson. Researchers can provide forecasts of temperature and oxygen level trends, and fishermen can pinpoint if the water will be the right temperature for catching particular species of fish.
Fishermen who in the past relied on information gleaned from experience in fishing recently have encountered many surprises, said Sanderson. For example, while the waters off the Cape have been rapidly warming, last year the waters were the coldest they had been since 1996, she said.
“Fishermen’s decisions are often based on decades and decades, or even generations of traditional knowledge. They’ve built up this understanding of what’s supposed to happen when on the water, but things are changing so rapidly that it’s really hard to keep up with that knowledge and have it be current without additional tools,” Sanderson said.
According to Sanderson and Maynard, the sensor program offers an important opportunity for fishermen to advance science while also looking out for their businesses.
“It’s helping the larger understanding of the environment, and how we’re going to make Massachusetts coastally resilient and all of that good stuff,” Sanderson said. “But at the end of the day, for us, it really comes down to the fishermen being able to use it to help make decisions about where and when they’re going to fish.”
