Saildrones Helping F/V Oscar Dyson in Pollock Survey, Unmanned Craft Can Expand Survey Footprint
SEAFOODNEWS.COM [New York Times] by John Markoff with additional material by Peggy Parker - September 7, 2016
ALAMEDA, Calif. -- Earlier this summer, two robotic sailboats traced lawn-mower-style paths across the violent surface of the Bering Sea, off the coast of Alaska. The boats are counting fish -- pollock, to be specific -- with a fancy version of the fish finder sonar you'd find on a bass fishing boat.
About 2,500 miles away, Richard Jenkins, a mechanical engineer and part-time daredevil, is tracking the robot sailboats on a large projection screen in an old hangar that used to be part of the Alameda Naval Air Station. Now the hangar is the command center of a little company called Saildrone.
The Saildrones, 20-foot trimarans with hard, carbon-fiber sails, were deployed in the Bering Sea as part of an annual fisheries survey conducted by...
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