Technology Scans Giant Fish Schools 31
rhettb writes "Employing a new technology, MIT engineers have studied the origins of a mass gathering of hundreds of millions of fish and their subsequent migration. This is the first time a mass migration of animals has been studied from beginning to end, according to their paper published in Science. Until now biologists have depended on theory rather than data from the field, employing computer simulations and experiments in the lab. The MIT engineers employed a new technology, Ocean Acoustic Waveguide Remote Sensing (OAWRS), to record the mass migrations in detail. Developed by Makris and his team in 2006, the OAWRS is able to take images of an area 62 miles (100 kilometers) in diameter every 75 seconds. The system relies on sending sound waves that locate objects by bouncing off of them."
Better link (Score:2, Informative)
Cool. Better link:
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sciencenow;2009/326/4
Re:Sonar (Score:3, Informative)
The system relies on sending sound waves that locate objects by bouncing off of them.
Thank you! Simply saying it relied on SONAR would have left us all completely befuddled.
Well yes and no. Typical military SONAR operates in the 2 kHz to 10 kHz range or sea floor mapping SONAR at 5 kHz, while OAWRS is significantly lower from 300 Hz to 1.5 kHz. It is also different than typical SONAR in that there is a transmitting vessel and a separate receiving vessel. Using separate transmit and receive locations that are a significant distance from each other also differentiates it from conventional long range SONAR which operates at 500 Hz. Here's a link that describes OAWRS in more detail if you're interested: http://www.onr.navy.mil/sci_tech/32/reports/docs/08/oamakris.pdf [navy.mil]