Fish stock assessments along the West Coast provide an essential view into fish populations and are integral to setting fishing rules and limits for the commercial fishing industry. In the summer and fall of 2018, five saildrones set off in a partnership with NOAA to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the West Coast assessment. This was the first integrated USV and ship survey of the North American West Coast.
The goal of the mission was to augment ship-based fish stock assessments and answer questions about whether autonomous data collection can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of fisheries management on the West Coast. Using echo sounder sensors, the USVs collected a data set on the fish stock of hake, sardine, and anchovy populations. Throughout the mission, the USVs duplicated the path of the NOAA Fisheries ship Reuben Lasker in addition to collecting data closer to shore, beyond where NOAA ships can safely navigate.
In January 2019, a Saildrone USV was launched from Newport, Rhode Island, in collaboration with the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography. The scientific objective of this campaign was to quantify air-sea heat and carbon exchange in the Gulf Stream while also assessing a saildrone as a potential platform to reduce uncertainties and build a mechanistic understanding of the key time/space scales and processes governing these exchanges in Western Boundary Current regions.
In the summer of 2018, a Saildrone unmanned surface vehicle (USV) was launched in San Francisco to follow a course south along the US/Mexico coast toward Guadalupe Island. A coalition of 23 scientists involved in 17 projects tracked the saildrone across the highly variable California Current System with two main areas of focus: To assess the utility of Saildrone measurements for satellite sea surface temperature (SST) validation and model assimilation; and to study air-sea heat flux along dynamic frontal regions using Saildrone’s core payload of sensors and an Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP).
Fish stock assessments along the West Coast provide an essential view into fish populations and are integral to setting fishing rules and limits for the commercial fishing industry. In the summer and fall of 2018, five saildrones set off in a partnership with NOAA to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the West Coast assessment. This was the first integrated USV and ship survey of the North American West Coast.
