By MICHELLE KLAMPE/OSU News Service
Oregon State University researchers are helping to refine the design and expanded use of oxygen monitoring sensors that can be deployed in crab or lobster pots to gather critical information on changing ocean conditions.
The new project, a collaboration with industry and tribes, is funded by a three-year, $1.2 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The dissolved oxygen sensors were initially developed by OSU researchers to learn more about how hypoxia, or low oxygen, is affecting crabbing in the Pacific Northwest. They have shown to be an effective tool for crabbers and fisheries managers and versions of the sensors have drawn interest from other fisheries and are now used by the East Coast lobster industry.
“This sensor has proven to be a vital and innovative tool for collecting important data about changing ocean conditions in areas that matter most to our local partners,” said Jessica Garwood, an assistant professor in OSU’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and the project’s principal investigator. “This project is really about scaling up this technology so that it can be implemented and adopted more widely across the region and potentially globally.”
Under the grant, the researchers want to refine the sensor design and expand its capabilities to provide real-time information to boats and fishery managers to guide decisions about where and when to place pots or pull them up.
Hypoxia is a low-oxygen condition that poses a significant threat to a wide range of marine animals, with major impacts on the ecosystem and the economy, including tourism and the seafood industry.
The Dungeness crab fishery is an important economic driver across the West Coast. In Oregon, it is considered the most valuable single-species fishery, bringing in $33 million to $90 million a year.
Oregon now has a “hypoxia season,” much like the wildfire season, that takes place in late summer. When oxygen levels get low enough, crabs and other marine organisms that cannot move away rapidly enough, die of oxygen starvation.
Began with crabbing help
Oregon State researchers first developed the sensor concept more than a decade ago in response to concerns from Oregon crabbers who were pulling up pots full of dead crabs that had been caught in hypoxic dead zones. They wanted advice on where they might have better success.
“It was a really effective research tool, and it gave the crabbers information they wouldn’t have had otherwise, but the process was slower than we wanted it to be,” said Francis Chan, director of the Cooperative Institute for Marine Ecosystem and Resources Studies at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport. “The fishing community had to wait for me to compile the data to get an overall picture of the region.”
Chan said now researchers are “in a position to turn this tool into something that could be as commonplace as a fish finder.” He said the devices can be “put it into the hands of the people out working in the ocean, while also collecting important ocean data every day.”
Researchers are working with the Sexton Co. of Salem to manufacture up to three rounds of prototypes of the sensor for testing by the fishing community. Fishing industry partners include commercial and charter fishermen in Newport, Port Orford and Brookings, and the Tulalip Tribe in Washington.
Wide adoption of the sensors by fishers and fisheries management groups also presents an opportunity to glean a significant amount of new information over a larger area about changing ocean conditions, said Jack Barth, a co-investigator on the project and special advisor to OSU’s Marine and Coastal Opportunities program.
Barth and Chan worked together with Oregon fishers to launch the initial sensor project.
“What we really want are weekly or even daily underwater maps, where you can start to see patterns of how hypoxic areas grow and move around in the ocean,” Barth said.
With funds from the NOAA program, the OSU team will work with industry, tribal and government partners to develop a low-cost sensor that collects and shares data in an automated and easy to use way, such as an app with notifications.
“People are really good at interpreting data when they have exposure to that data, and this is information they want,” Garwood said. “If the fishing community has access to data about ocean conditions, they will develop a sense of, ‘Oh, when I see this, that means it’s fine to drop my pots here.’ And we will be grateful for what they teach us in the process.”
Data also will be collected and made available to researchers through the Northwest Association of Networked Ocean Observing Systems, where it will augment other coastal ocean data already being collected and be made available to researchers across the globe.