Fundamentals of Underwater Localization for On-Demand Fishing

Presented by Dr. Mark Baumgartner, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution &
The Ropeless Consortium

October 11, 2024
10-11am (EDT)
WEBINAR RECORDING

On-demand fishing (sometimes also referred to as ropeless or buoyless fishing) entails the deployment, marking, and retrieval of baited traps without vertical lines for the commercial harvest of benthic crustaceans (e.g., lobster, crab) or demersal fish. Traditional fishing features a buoy on the sea surface to both hold up the vertical line used in retrieval of the gear and to mark the location of the gear on the sea floor so that other fixed and mobile fishers do not interact with the gear. With the removal of this buoy for on-demand fishing, an alternative method to locate and share the position of gear on the sea floor is needed. In some circumstances, the position where the gear was deployed can be obtained from a global positioning system (GPS) receiver on the fishing vessel; however, this method of marking the location of the gear may be too inaccurate in areas/times when trawls are set very close to one another. In such cases, underwater localization is needed to estimate the actual position of the gear on the sea floor. This webinar will review methods for underwater localization that have been proposed for on-demand fishing (ranging and directional ranging) and will discuss how these methods may be used to facilitate effective gear location marking for a commercial fishery.

Dr. Mark Baumgartner is a Senior Scientist in the Biology Department of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and one of the founders of the Ropeless Consortium. He has been involved in many aspects of on-demand fishing, including and especially gear location marking and interoperability, and he has expertise in detecting and localizing both whales and fishing gear using ocean acoustics.