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The founders of Kintama Research developed the concept of a vast, low-cost array of marine sensors allowing precise measurement of the movements and survival of marine animals anywhere along the continental shelf off the west coast of North America. Like many new ideas, it was generally held to be technologically infeasible to do so--and many thought that the data was not worth the effort in the first place.
Today, 7 years after the initial concept, we operate the core components of a network of integrated, low-cost,
acoustic receivers that already spans most of the Pacific continental shelf
of North America. These receivers detect acoustic tags implanted in aquatic
animals and make possible an essentially complete census of migrating
animals—even ones as small as salmon smolts. Our vision is to lead
a revolution in marine research by expanding this network until it operates
24/7, every day of the year, along the continental shelf of every continent
in the world. When complete, we believe that this integrated global network should lead to a revolution in marine science.
For too long, animals in the ocean were virtually invisible
to humans. This absence of information hampered our ability to make informed decisions about the management of our natural resources-- and in some cases is used as an excuse for not doing a better job. On a more elemental level, our formerly teeming seas still abound in a rich range of behaviour that has remained hidden and elusive from human knowledge. Traditionally, we have only scraps of indirect information
about the movements and survival of fish, most of which comes from
animals that were tagged in one location, released, and then recovered
in another place. Return rates are low, and tell us nothing about
movements between release and recovery—and nothing about
what the movements would have been later on. It was with the ambitious
goal of filling this gap that the POST
acoustic array was conceived
and Kintama Research was incorporated to make it work. |
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