This proposal describes the design of an autonomous way of monitoring marine benthic life and an autonomous way of fishing.
The rationale for the project:
- The benthic ecosystem will have to be monitored more intensively in the future. For the
ecosystem approach, more data will be needed. Spatial planning and the increasing number of users of space at sea reinforce the need for reliable and extensive data sets. Existing monitoring techniques have limitations.
- Bottom trawl fisheries have environmental issues such as high fuel consumption, discarding, seafloor disturbance and animal welfare and are increasingly restricted in their access to fishing grounds. Hence, an alternative is needed. This SBO project aims to design and test a newly combined electromagnetic (EM), sonar/ultrasound sensor and acoustic cameras carried by a seadrone to determine biomass, numbers and size of animals and potentially species of benthic fish and invertebrates ‘on’ and up to 10 cm ‘into’ the sediment. The 3 teams (UGent-WAVES, ILVO, VLIZ) will join forces in the project, each with their complementary expertise in propagation and antenna design (WAVES), sonar and data processing for fish detection and biomass monitoring (ILVO/VLIZ), and sea-drone design (VLIZ). They will be supported by a pre-project established
consortium of companies delivering advice during the SBO-project and committed to start R&D projects for the longer term goals. These ‘post-SBO’ goals include: 

- the development of an autonomous swarm of underwater drones carrying a newly designed
sensor to monitor benthic life, 

- the development of the drones to carry a newly designed fish catching device. The swarm detects and maps fish and selects the species and sizes wanted and subsequently catches the fish. 

The new sensor is a unique concept that allows operating in dark and turbid conditions and allows to scan below the seafloor. The post-SBO R&D leads to an efficient and cheap way of monitoring and fishing.