The seafood industry has long been an economic driver in Rhode Island, but it's facing a number of challenges — including rising costs, warming waters and an aging workforce. In an effort to combat these obstacles, the National Science Foundation has awarded a $15 million grant to the University of Rhode Island and several regional partners.
Morning host Luis Hernandez spoke with Marta Gomez-Chiarri, an aquaculture and fisheries professor at URI, about how her lab is hoping to use the money to spur technological innovations that can help strengthen the health and viability of the local seafood industry.
Interview highlights:
On the history and importance of fishing and seafood in New England:
Marta Gomez-Chiarri: I think the seafood industry in New England is a legacy industry. It's totally integrated in the cultural and social fabric of our region, from indigenous times and through colonial times, and now through immigration forces that came from the Azores, Portugal and Cape Verde.
And all those people that came to New England really lived off the sea and had a strong relationship with the sea and the ocean and seafood. So I see seafood as an integral part of the fabric of New England.
On what has changed in fisheries over history and recently:
Gomez-Chiarri: So the main thing that is changing is our environment. First, there's more people in the world, and there is more influence of humans on the environment — more things getting into the water. And as the environment changes, the fish populations change where they are, and we've also been fishing in them for a long time.
What technology can do is help us understand that environment better. The coastal oceanographers have been working on the ocean and looking at the environment and understanding it for a long time, and they use very sophisticated technologies to do so. And, so what we can do is bring some of those technologies to the fishing and aquaculture industries to understand better how the environment is changing, not only on a large scale, but also small scale, like day to day.
Or, for example, a farmer — when there's shellfish in one area of the farm that is dying while in another area of the farm is doing perfectly well. What is different between those two things? And farmers and fishers are great at observing the environment. We are just providing technological tools that integrate that information and make it available faster so they can make decisions in real time.
How sensors are used to monitor coastal areas:
Gomez-Chiarri: So right now we have sensors, like temperature, in the farms, and [they] can tell us if there's been a spike in temperature. It's the same like in greenhouses. There's a spike in temperature and we know that [the fish] may be stressed, and we can do something to watch for negative effects on the farm.
The sensors that we're trying to develop may (show a) change in levels in nutrition… Or they may be cameras that go in the cod end of a fishing boat and understand when there's a lot of bycatch — and you don't want to catch those fish — you open it so they go away and target just those that you want to catch. So this technology is not just sensors in the sense of measuring individual things, but cameras and imaging and things like that.
How rising temperatures are affecting fisheries:
Gomez-Chiarri: Fishers tell you all the time that they've seen a change in the composition of the species that are in our area. We may have an increase in crabs and a decrease in, maybe, the cod or haddock. And so they have to change their gear to be able to capture or target the specific species that may be in a particular location.
The migration patterns are not only changing for sharks. They are changing for the things that sharks eat. Which is actually what we are targeting in the fishing industry. So, those sensors, those cameras, those images will help us understand more how the patterns are changing, but also which new species we may be able to target and how we can change the whole seafood supply chain to take advantage of.
The future of the project:
Gomez-Chiarri: We get evaluated after two years on our progress and our interactions with the industry and having commercial applications that are getting ready to be applied in the seafood industry. So the whole project will get evaluated on our performance in two years, and that will open the ability to get the next $40 million, and then eventually after a second evaluation, we may be able to tap into those $160 million. And that's for a total of 10 years.
