Award

Responsible operation of ropeless fishing gear to avoid whale entanglements must involve a method of retrieval if the gear surfaces at a different place and/or time than expected. Blue Ocean Gear will demonstrate the capability of innovative Smart Buoy devices to detect and locate ropeless buoy systems once they have reached the surface, whether planned or unplanned. This will improve commercial operations by providing fishermen with an immediate location signal upon surfacing, allowing them to find and haul their gear more reliably and efficiently, as well as alerts if their gear has come to the surface inadvertently without being signaled to release. This will allow trap fishermen to fish responsibly using ropeless techniques, helping to avoid whale entanglements as well as lost gear. The Smart Buoy design is a standard fishing buoy equipped with GPS tracking as well as communications electronics capable of conveying positioning data to a map display on the fisherman’s smart device. The system is low-cost, reliable, and compatible with current gear configurations. This proposal will evaluate performance under deployment with a ropeless buoy system with commercial fishermen under typical operational conditions.