Halifax company pilots new lobster trap tracking technology | 24CA News
A Halifax startup is testing out new know-how geared toward serving to the fishing trade get better misplaced lobster traps and different fishing gear that may be lethal to marine life.
The firm, Marine Thinking, has launched a pilot challenge that entails tagging the traps with high-tech units. The tags ship indicators to specifically designed consoles on fishing vessels that enable crews to watch the place their gear is utilizing their telephones or different units.
“Almost every fisherman loses traps in their season, so there is a big economic driver behind it,” stated Yuan Yao, a product director with the corporate. “So you can identify them and retrieve them, preventing that loss from happening.”
The initiative is receiving $250,000 from Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s ghost-gear fund, which helps initiatives focusing on misplaced or discarded fishing gear.
It is estimated that between 600,000 and 800,000 metric tonnes of ghost gear goes into the world’s oceans yearly, the division says. A non-profit group referred to as Coastal Action collected greater than 32 tonnes of misplaced gear on shorelines and in waters round Nova Scotia final yr.
When lobster traps and different fishing gear is misplaced within the ocean, “it attracts more fish into it and they can’t get out, and in turn it attracts more, and it creates this terrible situation,” Yao stated, including that ropes and different gear is usually a hazard to whales.
Financial incentive
The firm is testing its gear with three lobster fishers this season. One of them is 63-year-old Jamie Osborne, from Eastern Passage, N.S, who has fished lobster for 40 years.
A giant motive he is within the know-how is due to the monetary hit he takes when he loses traps.
“Well if it will help me find my gear — because they’re expensive to buy, like they’re $300 a trap, that’s what they cost — and if this will help me retrieve it, I’m all for it,” he stated.
Osborne additionally makes picket traps himself, however they nonetheless price round $60 in supplies.
“I’ve lost as high as 12 or 15 in a season but last season was good. I only lost five, I think,” he stated. “Other fishing boats will run across the line or the buoy and it gets around their prop and cuts it off, so then it’s gone. You can’t get it. So that’s how we lose 99 per cent of ours.”
All misplaced gear should be reported to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, which provides extra work for the crew.
Hopes for sustainability
Osborne’s daughter Ashley has fished with him for the previous 12 years. She’s eager to see the event of any know-how that may assist maintain the fishery.
“I want to keep fishing, my children might want to fish. This all impacts it. Small lobsters can crawl into the trap. They will never grow to size, so if they’re down there at the bottom they’re stuck there and nobody knows,” she stated.
Fishing crews presently mark the place their gear is on GPS methods however Yao defined these methods can have their limitations.
“When you deploy a trap into the water, you record on the GPS. But when a storm situation happens, that trap got moved away so you wouldn’t know exactly where it is anymore,” he stated.
The tagging units will have the ability to present places that retrieval corporations can work with to assist get better the gear by sending down divers or remote-controlled underwater autos.
The system additionally mechanically digitizes the placement info, eliminating the necessity for fishing crews to manually report GPS places.
The firm says it hopes to market the tags with a price ticket of round $40, to be able to maintain the system economical.
It can also be exploring the opportunity of recording extra info on the units, reminiscent of ocean temperature or the exact places of a crew’s most efficient fishing spots.
The firm plans to develop the pilot challenge to 25 fishing crews subsequent season.
