A New Era of Ubiquitous High-Tech Sensors Will Transform Sustainable
Seafood Practices and Policies
We already have an enormous number of sensors in our
homes, cars, cities, rural areas, oceans, and even high overhead in satellites
that measure a myriad of factors such as temperature, pressure, light, sound,
chemical composition, movement, radiation, and even gravity! However, we are now entering a new era where
sensors will have much more advanced capabilities, be smaller and cheaper, and
be deployed everywhere. This brave new
world will be forever filled with billions and billions of sensors that will
monitor and collect vast amounts of data about every aspect of our lives from
our personal health to changes in our natural environment.
While this new era of ubiquitous sensors will
have both negative and positive ramifications, it will certainly be overwhelmingly
positive for the advancement of sustainable seafood production. The old adage that you cannot improve something
if you cannot measure it, certainly holds true for all aspects of our seafood sustainability
goals and aspirations. This highly
advanced sensor-filled world will transform current sustainable seafood
practices and policies as we struggle to confront the rapidly occurring man-made
changes of global warming, ocean acidification, and aquatic eutrophication that
so severely impact both wild fisheries and aquaculture.
In this new era, these sensors will produce huge
quantities of data as they monitor not only fishery and aquaculture biomasses,
but also their surrounding environmental parameters. These specifically targeted sensor data will
have unprecedented utility because spatial, temporal, compositional, and
behavioral measurements will have a never before seen degree of accuracy and
relevancy. This flow of data will be in
real-time, as this sensor-filled world will be connected instantaneously by the
“internet of things” (IoT). Just as
amazing as this, there will be the computer power and data methods available to
analyze this vast number of measurements to discover never before seen correlations
between fisheries, their environment, and the demand parameters placed upon fisheries
and aquaculture for our sustenance. Armed
with these new enhanced real-time data, fishery and aquaculture practices and
policies will become much more responsive and predictive in nature.
Technologically advanced real-time optical, sonic, and
GPS sensors will monitor all the lifecycle stages of fishery biomasses and
farmed seafood. In addition, real-time
monitoring of fishing vessels’ catch compositions, quantities, locations,
discards, and habitat and endangered species impacts will become the norm and
will greatly reduce the need for onboard observers. Sensor use in aquaculture will become
affordable and instrumental in advancing best practices to maximize input
efficiencies, animal health, and to reduce effluents and other negative
environmental impacts.
These new era sensors will become smaller and more robust. They will routinely be hitching rides on the
bodies of wild and farmed fish, ocean currents, fishing gear, pond surfaces, and
on many yet unimagined substrates. Miniature
lens-less cameras, sonic, and other sensors will be better able to map the
oceans’ plankton abundance in real-time.
This will provide insights into how man-made changes in the biogeochemical
and geophysical parameters of Earth affect this foundational link in the marine
food chain. These insights will help
transform sustainable seafood practices and policies to embrace a much more
holistic perspective. This will help bring
to light the absolute need to confront the growing problems of global warming,
ocean acidification, and aquatic eutrophication in order to protect the future
of both wild fisheries and aquaculture.
This new era of ubiquitous sensors will help broaden our
current concept of individual ecosystem approaches to fisheries and aquaculture
management to an even more enhanced holistic perspective based on the entire biosphere
approach. Nothing helps explains this
broader concept better than to simply observe how the two biogeochemical cycles
of carbon and nitrogen have been thrown off-kilter by our massive production of
CO2, by the burning of fossil fuels, and by our massive production of synthetic
nitrogen fertilizers. These two human
activities are unfortunately increasing global warming, ocean acidification and
aquatic eutrophication. However, the
burning of fossil fuels and the production of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers
have been absolutely monumental in the course of human history because they
have made it possible for over 7 billion of us to be alive today (2 billion of
us in 1930). These two transformative technological
accomplishments have also allowed us to enjoy never before seen high levels of
wellbeing. In this coming sensor-filled
world, high-tech sensors will be monitoring all the critical points along the
carbon and nitrogen recycling pathways.
By doing so, they will detect changes in a vast variety of variables
such as ocean pH and eutrophication levels in real-time. These highly advanced
and cost effective sensors will further help usher in this more holistic
concept of the biosphere approach to sustainable and responsible seafood
production.
Massive amounts of sensor data will also be collected in
real-time from the geophysical processes of weather, ocean circulation,
volcanos, seismology, rising sea levels (due to global warming), and from
multiple points along the global hydrologic cycle. These additional data will further help
drive acceptance of the holistic concept that Earth’s biogeochemical and
geophysical processes, that humans can indeed throw off-kilter, are the
ultimate determinants of the future of sustainable seafood production.
This coming new era of high-tech ubiquitous sensors will
help foster the creation of tools and policies that will aggressively work to
correct, mitigate, and prevent the negative man-made consequences of global
warming, ocean acidification, and aquatic dead zones that so severely impact our
wild fisheries and aquaculture. The negative impacts of CO2 emissions and
eutrophication are recent phenomena created by humanity’s technological ingenuity. This very same technological inventiveness
will also provide the solutions to these problems and sensors will play a
defining role as we boldly confront the negative consequences of our own
success as the world’s most dominant species.
One last prediction concerning personal wearable
sensors: In this coming new era, advanced
personal health sensors will tell us when our omega 3 and selenium levels are
low and then immediately locate and direct us to the nearest restaurant for
some sustainable seafood! This will be yet
another overwhelmingly positive ramification in this soon to arrive brave new
world of ubiquitous sensors.
