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MarinEyE will monitor the oceans to save resources (Porto 24)
The MarinEye, a multitrophic prototype for ocean monitoring, is being developed by the Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research (CIIMAR), in partnership with three other institutions – INESC TEC, the Portuguese Sea and Atmosphere Institute (IPMA), and the Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre (MARE – IP Leiria).
The different research groups are now trying to create a prototype that will be able to collect and provide information that will make it possible to “identify changes in biodiversity”, according to a press release by INESC TEC .
This system will operate autonomously, study the impact of climate changes, and detect environmental anomalies. Ultimately, it will enable a “more sustainable management of marine resources and a reduction of environmental risks.”
Catarina Magalhães, project coordinator and researcher at CIIMAR, explains that the project responds to an “imperative” need of acquiring more and more knowledge “about the oceans. We need to know how marine organisms interact with the environment and amongst themselves”, so that we can understand “how they influence the global stability of oceans.”
MarinEye, which will start in 2017, is being funded by the EEA Grants programme in over 400 thousand euros. The first prototype will be a multisensory system that will measure parameters, such as temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen or pH. This system will feature an “optical sensor platform that will be used to measure dissolved carbon dioxide”, according to the press release.
The second module is an autonomous filtering system that makes it possible to retain and preserve the DNA of the different classes of microorganisms that “inhabit and represent the largest biomass possible of the oceans.”
A high resolution imaging system will be developed to collect images of phytoplankton and zooplankton, “to assess their abundance and biodiversity.”
The last module will collect hydro-acoustic data to estimate the amount of fish in a delimited area of the ocean, to determine the presence of marine mammals.
The different modules will be aggregated in a single prototype – the MarinEye – which will be used to collect and relate data from different types of analysis.
According to Eduardo
Silva, coordinator of INESC TEC’s Centre for Robotics and Autonomous Systems, “the
type and amount of information that the MarinEye will give access to will constitute
a solid foundation for building a system that will allow us to manage marine
resources more efficiently.”.
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