Technology Scans Giant Fish Schools

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."

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[bluefoxlucid]

MIT nerds ping fish, echo reply in 0.012 seconds.

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[Idiomatick]

That seems unlikely.... In sea water that puts the fish only 9m away.

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[craze ivan]

So you know all the factors that influence the sound waves speed at every point along the migration as well as every point from the surface to the maximum depth they were measuring. Ya I thought not, shoot down someone's joke, which was funny, risk being shot down.

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[Slumdog]

MIT nerds ping fish, echo reply in 0.012 seconds.

Using traceroute after access denied.

Better link

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool. Better link:
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sciencenow;2009/326/4

Future Technology Deployment...

[Narnie]

This new technology will be installed on Chinese and Japanese fishing vessels to further depopulate the oceans and provide temporary low seafood prices. When asked about what they would do after emptying the ocean of fish, the Chinese spokesperson replied, "We're working on that."

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[cplusplus]

I wish I could mod this "Sad but true"

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[SupremoMan]

"We're working on that."

Soylent Green

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[IonOtter]

Fish! Plankton! Sea greens! Protein from the sea!

Oblig. Ghostbusters

[rubies]

Not an undersea, unexplained mass sponge migration?

And did they move more than a foot and a half?

Sonar

[Tubal-Cain]

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.

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[Slumdog]

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.

Maybe he was thinking Radar and decided it didn't sound right.

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[mooingyak]

Sometimes we send out sound waves that are actually polite requests for the fish to provide us with their current coordinates.

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[The Grim Reefer2]

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 detai

Dangerous Catch

[Sun.Jedi]

... would be so boring if they knew where the fish were.

This is unfortunate.

[nuckfuts]

I used to work on a commercial fishing vessel. With the the number of boats and the nets we used, the main reason we didn't take ALL the fish is that the ocean is so BIG. I've seen water churning with salmon which could not be located a short while later when fishing was allowed to begin.

If tools are now available to reliably track schools of fish in open waters, I think it's inevitable that the next step will be someone scooping them up in a net.

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[Ozlanthos]

I was present in LA during the 92-94 El Nino years. Commercial boats got so fricken lazy they would send a spotter plane out to find out where the party boats were catching fish. then come in with purse-seines and drag the area dry. They kept doing this past the point of driving Yellowfin below .08 a pound(side note: at the time Mackeral was going for .18 a pound...and they use it primarily to make cat food and fertilizer...)!!! THEY KEPT IT UP UNTIL IT COST MORE TO GO OUT THAN COULD BE MADE ON A FULL LOAD

Have you ever met a human?

[professorguy]

Everyone should take only half a load? Yeah, that'll work great. Build in a huge incentive to cheat once prices are high. Your suggestion would lead to a highly exploitable environment, which people will exploit because that's what people do. Let's face it, "exploit environment" has been a successful strategy for about 4 billion years. Your gentlemen's agreement is essentially asking us to become a different species. Unlikely.

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[Ozlanthos]

Sorry if I am so "pro-human" that I'd dare to suggest that we'd be able to think further than the ends of our noses. You want to know what the real exploit there is to be made here really is???? I have the boat, I can fish, you cannot!!! HAHAHA!! If I don't go out and kill it, YOU CAN'T EAT IT AT MCDONALD'S!!! Of course the only way that will work for me is if everyone else does it too. Don't get me wrong, I know many commercial fishermen are uneducated about things like ecology, economics and biology. I ha

I will take unpredictability any day

[Discoflamingo13]

"You forget, Peter. I was present at an undersea, unexplained mass sponge migration."