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Technology Scans Giant Fish Schools

Posted by timothy on from the for-great-harvests dept.

rhettb writes "Employing a new technology, MIT engineers have studied the origins of a mass gathering of hundreds of millions of fish and their subsequent migration. This is the first time a mass migration of animals has been studied from beginning to end, according to their paper published in Science. Until now biologists have depended on theory rather than data from the field, employing computer simulations and experiments in the lab. The MIT engineers employed a new technology, Ocean Acoustic Waveguide Remote Sensing (OAWRS), to record the mass migrations in detail. Developed by Makris and his team in 2006, the OAWRS is able to take images of an area 62 miles (100 kilometers) in diameter every 75 seconds. The system relies on sending sound waves that locate objects by bouncing off of them."

20 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Basically by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 3, Funny

    MIT nerds ping fish, echo reply in 0.012 seconds.

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  2. Re:Basically by Idiomatick · · Score: 1

    That seems unlikely.... In sea water that puts the fish only 9m away.

  3. Better link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Cool. Better link:
    http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sciencenow;2009/326/4

  4. Future Technology Deployment... by Narnie · · Score: 2, Funny

    This new technology will be installed on Chinese and Japanese fishing vessels to further depopulate the oceans and provide temporary low seafood prices. When asked about what they would do after emptying the ocean of fish, the Chinese spokesperson replied, "We're working on that."

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    greed@All_Evils:~#
    1. Re:Future Technology Deployment... by cplusplus · · Score: 1

      I wish I could mod this "Sad but true"

      --
      "False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
    2. Re:Future Technology Deployment... by SupremoMan · · Score: 1

      "We're working on that."

      Soylent Green

    3. Re:Future Technology Deployment... by IonOtter · · Score: 1

      Fish! Plankton! Sea greens! Protein from the sea!

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      [End Of Line]
  5. Oblig. Ghostbusters by rubies · · Score: 1

    Not an undersea, unexplained mass sponge migration?

    And did they move more than a foot and a half?

  6. Sonar by Tubal-Cain · · Score: 1

    The system relies on sending sound waves that locate objects by bouncing off of them.

    Thank you! Simply saying it relied on SONAR would have left us all completely befuddled.

    1. Re:Sonar by Slumdog · · Score: 1

      The system relies on sending sound waves that locate objects by bouncing off of them.

      Thank you! Simply saying it relied on SONAR would have left us all completely befuddled.

      Maybe he was thinking Radar and decided it didn't sound right.

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      FreeBSD bounties
    2. Re:Sonar by mooingyak · · Score: 1

      Sometimes we send out sound waves that are actually polite requests for the fish to provide us with their current coordinates.

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      William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
    3. Re:Sonar by The+Grim+Reefer2 · · Score: 2, Informative

      The system relies on sending sound waves that locate objects by bouncing off of them.

      Thank you! Simply saying it relied on SONAR would have left us all completely befuddled.

      Well yes and no. Typical military SONAR operates in the 2 kHz to 10 kHz range or sea floor mapping SONAR at 5 kHz, while OAWRS is significantly lower from 300 Hz to 1.5 kHz. It is also different than typical SONAR in that there is a transmitting vessel and a separate receiving vessel. Using separate transmit and receive locations that are a significant distance from each other also differentiates it from conventional long range SONAR which operates at 500 Hz. Here's a link that describes OAWRS in more detail if you're interested: http://www.onr.navy.mil/sci_tech/32/reports/docs/08/oamakris.pdf

  7. Dangerous Catch by Sun.Jedi · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ... would be so boring if they knew where the fish were.

  8. Re:Basically by Slumdog · · Score: 1

    MIT nerds ping fish, echo reply in 0.012 seconds.

    Using traceroute after access denied.

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    FreeBSD bounties
  9. This is unfortunate. by nuckfuts · · Score: 1

    I used to work on a commercial fishing vessel. With the the number of boats and the nets we used, the main reason we didn't take ALL the fish is that the ocean is so BIG. I've seen water churning with salmon which could not be located a short while later when fishing was allowed to begin.

    If tools are now available to reliably track schools of fish in open waters, I think it's inevitable that the next step will be someone scooping them up in a net.

    1. Re:This is unfortunate. by Ozlanthos · · Score: 1

      I was present in LA during the 92-94 El Nino years. Commercial boats got so fricken lazy they would send a spotter plane out to find out where the party boats were catching fish. then come in with purse-seines and drag the area dry. They kept doing this past the point of driving Yellowfin below .08 a pound(side note: at the time Mackeral was going for .18 a pound...and they use it primarily to make cat food and fertilizer...)!!! THEY KEPT IT UP UNTIL IT COST MORE TO GO OUT THAN COULD BE MADE ON A FULL LOAD OF TUNA!!!!

      It is one of the experiences that has filled me with disdain for the commercial fleets of the world. Their over-riding mind-set is "if I don't kill it someone else will". If the people of the world could see first hand what it takes to get their fish fillets and such, they would swear off sea food entirely! I know, and that is why I catch and release. Because I know full well, that if I do not kill it....IT IS STILL ALIVE!!!! It might even be bigger the next time someone catches it! It might even get a chance to mature and spawn and MAKE MORE FISH TO CATCH before being caught again!!!! Heaven forbid that should happen!

      Tell you what commercial fishermen of the globe. the next time you go out, no matter how many fish are out there to harvest, take in only half the capacity of your boat. Make an agreement with every single boat captain you know to do this, and have them do the same in kind. Before you know it, the stock of fish you catch will be much larger, making it necessary to take even less fish. If you keep it up long enough, the price per pound of fish will rise with the diminishing supply (the price of an available supply is dependent solely upon how much product is brought to the market, not how much is available on the planet!!!) Go out for shorter runs, bring in less, work less, make more per fish...see how that works? -Oz

  10. Have you ever met a human? by professorguy · · Score: 1

    Everyone should take only half a load? Yeah, that'll work great. Build in a huge incentive to cheat once prices are high. Your suggestion would lead to a highly exploitable environment, which people will exploit because that's what people do. Let's face it, "exploit environment" has been a successful strategy for about 4 billion years. Your gentlemen's agreement is essentially asking us to become a different species. Unlikely.

    1. Re:Have you ever met a human? by Ozlanthos · · Score: 1

      Sorry if I am so "pro-human" that I'd dare to suggest that we'd be able to think further than the ends of our noses. You want to know what the real exploit there is to be made here really is???? I have the boat, I can fish, you cannot!!! HAHAHA!! If I don't go out and kill it, YOU CAN'T EAT IT AT MCDONALD'S!!! Of course the only way that will work for me is if everyone else does it too. Don't get me wrong, I know many commercial fishermen are uneducated about things like ecology, economics and biology. I have only spent the better part of my life either in, on, or around some body of water or another (I could probably be classified as an amphibian with as much time as I've spent fishing.) I guess the fact that I can even think of such heresy must be the result of some mutation......but for the most part you are right....people suck, I just think we can, and should be better. -Oz

  11. Re:Basically by craze+ivan · · Score: 1

    So you know all the factors that influence the sound waves speed at every point along the migration as well as every point from the surface to the maximum depth they were measuring. Ya I thought not, shoot down someone's joke, which was funny, risk being shot down.

  12. I will take unpredictability any day by Discoflamingo13 · · Score: 1

    "You forget, Peter. I was present at an undersea, unexplained mass sponge migration."