An oceanographic campaign validates innovative technologies for managing marine ecosystems
The UPC’s Technological Development Centre for Remote Acquisition and Data Processing Systems (SARTI) has participated in a campaign to test novel technologies to enable the deployment of stations and vehicles for monitoring the marine environment and providing real-time data. Experiments were conducted off the Catalan coast up to 350 metres deep as part of the PLOME project.
Feb 28, 2024
A scientific team involving the UPC’s SARTI ran an oceanographic campaign in December to validate a set of innovative technologies to improve the supervision, monitoring and management of marine ecosystems. The campaign was conducted aboard the Spanish National Research Council’s (CSIC) oceanographic research vessel Sarmiento de Gamboa off the Catalan coast, at depths between 70 and 350 metres.
The campaign is part of the research project Platform for Long-lasting Observation of Marine Ecosystems (PLOME), coordinated by the University of Girona (UdG), with participation from the University of the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), the Technical University of Madrid (UPM), the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC) and Iqua Robotics.
Funded by the Spanish State Research Agency and the Next Generation EU plan, PLOME aims to develop a non-invasive and modular platform to gather essential data for the scientific community to monitor and manage marine ecosystems more efficiently. So far, a set of independent systems has been developed, consisting of fixed stations on the seabed, submarine vehicles and surface vehicles. These systems are equipped with batteries and wireless communication systems, which work both together and autonomously to collect data.
The project aims to advance current methodology, in which data extraction mostly occurs when a human team conducts an oceanographic campaign. Once the systems have been deployed on the seabed, the PLOME platform enables remote monitoring for several weeks with real-time communications facilitating ecosystem monitoring, without requiring human support.
During the December campaign, two fixed stations, two underwater vehicles and a surface buoy were deployed to transmit information, which served to validate the operation of the technologies developed since the beginning of the project. The systems communicated correctly using acoustic modems to share data and optical communication to share images. Cameras installed on each system recorded data from the seabed, which were processed using artificial intelligence techniques to detect the presence of individuals such as fish or crustaceans. New optical and acoustic mapping technologies of the seabed were also validated, allowing terrain reconstruction or acoustic visualisation to reduce the impact of artificial light in habitats not exposed to sunlight.
The test results were successful and work on the next validation campaigns of the project is already underway. The next one will be conducted at the UPC’s OBSEA, the cabled underwater observatory located off the Vilanova i la Geltrú coast and linked to the Vilanova i la Geltrú School of Engineering (EPSEVG). It will involve installing a fixed station capable of hosting an underwater vehicle, which will daily carry out monitoring tasks and return to the station to recharge batteries and transmit data. The project’s final campaign will take place in 2025, aboard another oceanographic research vessel, to validate the final development of the underwater monitoring platform.
