Award

As global efforts toward ocean health have gained momentum, it is critical to generate high quality ocean data for industries that operate and/or manage ocean resources. Blue Ocean Gear has demonstrated how Smart Buoys equipped with sensors can be useful to fisheries by tracking gear and providing enhanced marine condition awareness. Building on Phase I efforts, this project will highlight the opportunistic use of fishing gear already out on the water to provide relevant data for adjacent industries. Blue Ocean Gear’s combination of hardware and data will result in a powerful means of obtaining better insights to ocean conditions in high spatial granularity for offshore regions. The proposed project will bring to realization the features required for a low-cost, rugged, sensor-rich Data Buoy. Deployments will demonstrate the value of buoy data from fishing gear in Alaska and/or the Gulf of Mexico for use with meteorologists and offshore wind development. The resulting data products will demonstrate the applicability of these devices for increased markets. The overall outcome will be to bring buoy-generated data into a new realm, where fishing gear can be used to generate high quality data for ocean monitoring and health, and support of the responsible operation of marine industries.