2. What is Aquaculture?
• Breeding, rearing, and harvesting of animals and
plants in marine and freshwater.
• Aquaculture is a method used to produce food
and other commercial products, restore habitat
and replenish wild stocks, and rebuild
populations of threatened and endangered
species. --from NMFS OAQ
5. Drivers
• Global demand for seafood growing: need additional 40m tons in 20 years
• Federal nutrition guideline: eat 2x more seafood (~6m tons more per year)
• Jobs, especially in coastal fishing communities
• Working waterfronts preservation
• Seafood security: ~90% of seafood Americans eat is imported, ½ from
aquaculture. Growing middle class in Asia and Latin America is competing
with us for that seafood.
• Reduce $14b seafood trade deficit and create export opportunities
• Local and traceable food movements
• Restoration of species and habitats using aquaculture (e.g. oysters,
mussels, macroalgae in estuaries; kelp for CO2 capture; kelp for biofuel)
6.
7.
8.
9. • USA federal nutrition guideline: eat 2x more
seafood (~6m tons more per year)
• Benefits of increased health in the
population could also create realized health
cost reductions for society
• Better unsaturated fats to saturated fats ratio (i.e.
omega 3/omega 6)
• Vitamins A, D, and B12
• Scores of minerals
10. What works in the US?
• Largest EEZ in the world
• Significant seafood market (2nd largest consumer in
world)
• Wide range of culture habitats with commercially
valuable, farmable species
• Utilize working waterfronts
• Extensive infrastructure and highly skilled labor force
11. Department of Commerce and NOAA Fisheries Priorities
U.S. Department of Commerce | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | NOAA Fisheries | Page 11
DOC Strategic Plan 2018-2022:
Increase Aquaculture Production
• 1 stop shop for federal approval of marine aquaculture permits
• Streamline multi-agency permitting
• Support research to advance marine aquaculture
NOAA Fisheries FY19 Priorities:
Support Growth of Marine Aquaculture Production
• Accomplish the DOC aquaculture priorities.
• Invest and partner in marine aquaculture science, including coastal
planning and siting, disease prevention, and genetics research.
• Facilitate regulatory efficiency and cross-agency reviews and actions
for federal permitting of aquaculture.
• Support aquaculture projects that improve water quality, fish
production, habitat, and coastal economies.
12. Aquaculture as a Congressional Priority
• NOAA Fisheries and Sea Grant both
received increases for aquaculture
in Fiscal Year 2018 budget
appropriation from Congress.
• Congressional funding for regional
pilot projects and off-bottom
oysters.
13. Other Congressional Interest: Proposed
Legislation (AQUAA Act)
• NOAA lead agency, coordinates federal
permitting
• Remove aquaculture from MSA definition of
fishing
• 20-25 year permit or lease issued by NOAA
(security of tenure)
• Regional NEPA analyses led by NOAA
• Existing laws and requirements apply (e.g.,
Army Corps, EPA, BOEM)
• Specify additional environmental and
monitoring requirements
• Enforcement requirements and civil and
criminal penalties
• Mechanism for potential state objections (“opt
out”)
14.
15. “The solution to sustainable aquaculture is marine
spatial planning. That is, the responsible
management and siting of aquaculture farms.”
Jerry Schubel, Aquarium of the Pacific
16.
17.
18. U.S. Department of Commerce | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | NOAA Fisheries | Page 18
Marine Cadastre
Ocean Reports
19.
20. Confirmed Global Entanglements in
Mariculture Gear
• Up to 15 whale entanglements (5 are less
than certainties)
• 1 harbor porpoise
• 4 leatherback turtles
24. 1. Understanding the distribution and migration patterns of protected species to
determine areas where longline aquaculture installations were likely to have less
risk of interactions;
2. Enhancing interagency coordination, particularly between state and federal
agencies;
3. Developing clear methods to determine risk thresholds in longline aquaculture
gear;
4. Developing a model or template for risk assessments that demonstrates how to
present data associated with the risk determination;
5. Studying the behavior of protected species around fishing and longline aquaculture
gear and other structures in the marine environment to learn how entanglements
occur;
6. Addressing observational data gaps, especially to learn more about situations in
which protected species were known to be near aquaculture (or other) gear and
entanglements did not occur.
Priorities Identified at Workshop
25. Examples of projects addressing entanglement concerns in
aquaculture gear
Saltonstall-Kennedy Grant Program (S-K)
• NEMAC - Awarded proposal includes adding a suite of Go-Pro cameras and an
acoustic receiver for monitoring of protected resources
Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)
WHOI/Cliff Goudey & Assoc. – Experimental kelp array designed to minimize aerial
footprint and amount of vertical lines in the water.
Synthetik - An artificially intelligent, multi-modal, real time, and continuous
monitoring and data processing suite for offshore aquaculture
Aquaai Corp – A B2B (business to business) model offering monitoring services
performed by biomimetic fishlike drones.
U.S. Department of Commerce | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | NOAA Fishers | Page 25
26. Sea Grant Program
WHOI/New England Aquarium/UMASS Boston-–Probability of Encounter Model
Development, Gear Development Assessment (e.g. ropeless technologies)
U. New Hampshire - Commercial scale offshore aquaculture demonstration,
training and permitting to increase steelhead trout and blue mussel production in
New England
Dept. of Energy ARPA-e Program
Supporting development of blue economy technology such as, new mariculture gear
designs, drone tugs, etc.
Concepts seeking funding
Tension gauge on longlines- data sent back to shore computer/phone
• Whale simulator development proposed as part of developing scientifically
validated engineering design criteria for whale safe aquaculture gear. - Duke
U./New England Aquarium
27.
28. 01.
DeepSeaVision-AI
// NMFS RAC Briefing
Peter Vonk // +1-605-593-5500 // vonk@synthetik-technologies.com
Tim Brewer // +1-818-296-8611 // brewer@synthetik-technologies.com
1. OUR TEAM
2. ISSUE
3. TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW
04 DATA
05 PARTNERS
06 STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT
29. 07.
DeepSeaVision-AI
// An intelligent, multi-modal, real-time, and
continuous monitoring and data processing
suite for offshore aquaculture
MULTIMODAL DATA
ALARM | RECORD
30. 09.
TECHNICAL
BACKGROUND
// Image and video classification
of marine animals for edge-
computing deployment
Automatic image and frame-by-frame video analysis and classification for
deployment on edge-based computer hardware (on-site) and cloud-based
continuous monitoring
31. 011.
DSV-AI
// Whale detection, localization and
pixel-wise segmentation from aerial and
satellite imagery
DSVAIModel
ValidationData
SatellitePanchromaticImagery
ObjectDetectionandInstanceSegmentation
LEFT: Satellite image of fin whale from Cubaynes et. al.1, MID-LEFT: Raw DSVAI model
segmentation output, MID-RIGHT: Segmentation mask, RIGHT: Bounding box
32. DSV-AI: Continuous
Acoustic Monitoring
and Audio Processing
// Real-time underwater
audio processing using deep
convolutional and LSTM
neural networks
Developing and implementing state-of-the-art models
using deep learning for acoustic analysis
Adds an addition sensor modality
Contributes to the robustness, resiliency, and range of
the DeepSeaVision-AI system
1Cornell University Whale Detection Challenge Data, Bioacoustics Research Program (BRP), Cornell University, USA 14850
Spectrogram of audio containing a right whale call1
013.
33. PHASE II
PARTNERS
// DeepSeaVision-AI: An
intelligent, multi-modal, real-
time, and continuous monitoring
and data processing suite for
offshore aquaculture
University of New Hampshire
Michael Chambers
University of New England
Barry Costa-Pierce
Salem State
University/NEMAC
Ted Maney and Mark Fregeau
United States Naval Academy
Dave Fredrickson
33.
34. SUMMARY
// DeepSeaVision-AI: An
intelligent, multi-modal, real-
time, and continuous monitoring
and data processing suite for
offshore aquaculture
We are developing technologies that
can be fielded today and are cost-
effective to enable continuous
monitoring of offshore aquaculture
facilities to mitigate marine
entanglement risks
We need your input and feedback to
ensure that our direction is on mission
and continues to meet NOAA’s
objective
THANK YOU!
QUESTIONS?
34.
35. Cliff Goudey Assoc./WHOI experimental kelp array
U.S. Department of Commerce | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | NOAA Fisheries | Page 35
• Welded steel trusses
• Two 30 meter mooring lines
36. MIT SoFi soft bodied
robot fish
3rd Globalization Event with Artificial
Intelligence and Digital Everything
37. NOAA has been busy …
• NOS Tech Memo on entanglements
• Siting tools development and several alternative siting
analyses as models
• Contract on Risk Assessment Framework for the NE/MA
• NEFSC Marine Engineer position being added
• Structural Integrity Doc. Completed for Gulf of Mexico
• Workshops facilitating stakeholder input to entanglement
concerns and risk assessment needs
• National NOAA working group to coordinate across regions
on the potential interactions
38.
39.
40. Acknowledgements
• Jerry Schubel, Aquarium of the Pacific
• Halley Froehlich, U. California Santa Barbara
• Don Kent, Hubbs Sea World
• James Morris, NOAA NOS
• NMFS Office of Aquaculture
