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This may be the first time data collected using uncrewed surface vehicles were used to help produce an annual estimate of abundance for a commercial fish stock.
Every other year, NOAA Fisheries conducts an acoustic-trawl survey from crewed research vessels to measure pollock abundance in Alaska’s eastern Bering Sea. As a result of COVID-19, many research surveys were canceled, and we weren’t able to conduct our walleye pollock surveys. Data collected from these surveys are critical to manage pollock, which comprise the nation’s largest commercial fishery.
NOAA Fisheries scientist Alex De Robertis at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center developed a contingency plan: conducting the survey with saildrone wind- and solar-powered ocean-going robots. The hope was to collect some data despite the vessel survey cancellation.
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IMAGE: Off the coast of Hawaii, a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Hawaii Ocean Time-series Station buoy makes measurements of air-sea carbon dioxide, seawater pH, and other oceanographic parameters. view more
Credit: Al Plueddemann, WHOI.
As the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in the first half of 2020, humans around the world stopped moving and making, resulting in a 9% drop in the greenhouse gas emissions at the root of climate change.
Almost overnight, the Himalayas became visible from a distance for the first time in years. Rivers flowed free of toxic pollutants and the air sparkled with blue skies in major cities like New Delhi and Los Angeles. While internet rumors of swans and dolphins returning to Venetian canals were debunked, the idea that nature is healing in 2020 quickly took root.