Happy New Year! Here’s our first edition of the Friday Smorgi for 2017 and we’re hoping you enjoy reading along. We have a few interesting stories including an underwater drone for fishing, a cool new 3D ocean map, a unique approach to managing fisheries and some tasty invasive treats. Enjoy!
Fish on!
If dropping your bait in the water and trying to catch a fish the conventional way is too much of a chore for you, the PowerRay submersible drone might be for you. Tabbed as a drone to “redefine recreational fishing,” this new device uses a sonar and LED lures to track down and attract the fish for you, and even film them being caught in 4K. The company says the sonar can detect fish up to 40 meters away and a simple WiFi connection can shoot data, video, and images to an iOS and Android app up to 70 meters away. While we’d rather fish the old fashioned way (its a nice way to disconnect anyway), the PowerRay would be a great way just to explore the water around you.
Get your Ocean GIS fix
Thanks to a bunch of organizations teaming together, we have a new 3D ocean map that tracks the ocean’s ecosystems in unprecedented detail The intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations asked Roger Sayre, an ecologist at the US Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia, to lead a team to categorize terrestrial ecosystems. Teaming up with organizations like NOAA and Esri, a company that sells geographic information system (GIS) software, sorts global water masses into 37 categories like temperature, salinity, oxygen and nutrient levels. The team hopes that the map will help conservationists, government officials and others to better understand the biogeography of the oceans and make decisions about which areas to preserve.
Farming fish in public waters
The U.S. government is looking at aquaculture to combat overfishing and helping to feed a hungry planet. At a time when traditional commercial fishing is threatening fish populations worldwide, U.S. officials are working on a plan to expand fish farming, known as aquaculture, into federal waters around the Pacific Ocean. NOAA is creating a plan to manage commercial fish farms in federal waters, the area of ocean from three to 200 miles offshore, around Hawaii and other Pacific islands. The plan is similar to one that is already being implemented in the Gulf of Mexico.
Carp-a-eatem
Lionfish is one invasive fish species that is turning to our palates to help eradicate, even becoming available for purchase at Whole Foods. But what about the other big invasive species plaguing U.S. waters, the Asian carp? It is the culinary community that is helping drive the appetite for destruction for these fish. A recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle featured how both the lion fish and carp are making their way to Bay Area menus. Now I haven’t tried carp, but I just might have to head to Sausalito to try these yummy-looking Asian carp fish tacos.
[via SF Chronicle]
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