Commercial Fishing Vessels as Platforms for Coastal Ocean Research, Monitoring, and Management

This project, designated FleetLink, will develop partnerships between commercial fishermen and researchers, educators, and coastal managers for the collection, real-time telemetry, analysis, assimilation, distribution, and use of environmental and fisheries data from coastal regions off the northeastern US. The FleetLink partners will equip participating commercial fishing vessels with integrated sensor systems (including navigational, hydrographic, and meteorological components), and link them via satellite to land-based centers for collection, management, analysis, and assimilation of data. We are working toward a goal of 100 or more fully-instrumented fishing vessels which may provide enhanced oceanographic and meteorological data collection capacity for coastal and offshore areas throughout the NW Atlantic. Prepared in collaboration with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, the MIT Sea Grant Program Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Clearwater Instrumentation, Inc., Watertown, MA, and the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, Saco, ME.