About This Project

The Florida Reef Tract, the third largest barrier reef in the world, is being decimated by coral bleaching and disease. Heat stress is killing seagrass, a critical habitat for sea turtles, manatees, and juvenile fish. Mangroves are threatened by coastal deforestation and sea level rise. Scientists need data to protect this important habitat.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Smartfin addresses a recognized gap in near-shore data available to oceanographers, which is urgently needed to study some of the most imminent impacts of climate change on the ocean. For example, it is known that biogeochemical “hotspots”—places of disproportionately large photosynthesis/respiration—can be missed by static moored sensor deployments, which has implications on a complete and accurate understanding of ecosystem health. Uncovering this need for cost-effective solutions that fill the gap in data at the coast, and realizing that this coincides exactly with the zone in which surfers spend time in the water, the idea for Smartfin was born. Embedded sensors in a surfboard fin capture data needed to understand the dynamic coastal environment.

What is the significance of this project?

The ecosystems in the nearshore ocean are hugely important for maintaining a habitable climate. The nearshore zone is home to coral reefs, which in turn house over 25% of all fish species, as well as mangroves and seagrass beds, which sequester harmful carbon dioxide emissions. Yet existing technologies have left the nearshore zone chronically undersampled, making it difficult to protect.

Smartfin can fill this gap in data by providing an innovative, low cost solution that leverages citizen science to scale the volume of data collected.

Citizen science has several additional benefits as an approach- it improves public trust in science and understanding of climate issues, and gives participants a way to have a real impact.

What are the goals of the project?

The goal of this project is to facilitate a trial of Smartfin, to validate the quality of the data collected and robustness of the product for broad use by citizen scientists.

The data collected by this project will be used primarily by a researcher at Nova Southeastern University who studies coral health. As with all Smartfin data, it will also be freely accessible to any other researcher.

The trial will last 6 weeks, after which the user feedback will be gathered and data will be analyzed for consistency with existing data sources. Feedback from this trial will inform manufacturing and deployment scale up over the rest of this year.