9. Ocean of Things
Managing and monitoring the ocean has always been a daunting task due to its vastness, depth, and complexity. The Blue Economy, which encompasses various economic activities related to the ocean, such as fisheries, aquaculture, shipping, and tourism, also faces numerous challenges, including climate change, overfishing, pollution, and ecosystem destruction. To tackle these challenges and better understand and manage the ocean environment, we need innovative solutions, and one such solution is to adapt the Internet of Things in the Ocean (IoT) or — the Ocean of Things (OOT).
OOT is a network of small, low-cost, and autonomous sensors and devices that are deployed throughout the ocean to collect near real-time or live data on various environmental variables such as temperature, salinity, currents, waves, and ocean health. These technologies are equipped with advanced communication and data processing capabilities, allowing them to transmit data to a central hub for analysis, insights generation, and informed decision-making. OOT leverages cutting-edge monitoring and sensing technologies such as satellites, drones, and buoys to enable inter-platform networking and communication, providing high-frequency big ocean data, which is then made available to stakeholders such as scientists, businesses, and decision-makers for better ocean understanding and management.
The benefits of OOT are numerous. Firstly, by enabling big ocean data, OOT provides more accurate and detailed information about the ocean than ever before. This data can be used to monitor changing ocean conditions, inform development plans, monitor illegal activities, and provide insights into ocean health. Secondly, OOT can help to reduce the costs of ocean monitoring significantly. By using automated sensors, the cost of data-gathering is reduced, and the data can improve the efficiency of ocean-based operations, allowing businesses to optimize their use of resources and reduce their environmental impact. Thirdly, OOT can be a valuable tool to counter the effects of climate change. By providing detailed ocean data, OOT can help scientists and decision-makers better understand the impacts of climate change on the ocean and how to mitigate them. Additionally, OOT can provide robust monitoring for multiple ocean carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects currently in development, such as kelp sinking, alkalinity dumping, and/or iron/nutrient fertilization for carbon export and sequestration.
Moreover, OOT can help reduce the cost and risk associated with traditional ocean monitoring methods such as ship-based surveys and satellite remote sensing. OOT sensors are cheaper and easier to deploy and maintain than traditional methods, and they can provide more granular and real-time data. This can help us bridge the data gap in ship-based and remote sensing datasets, improving our understanding of the ocean environment while reducing the cost and risk associated with ocean monitoring.
OOT has many benefits for the blue economy, but there are still some challenges that need to be addressed. One major obstacle is the issue of power supply, which is not a concern in the equivalent paradigm on land, the Internet of Things (IoT). With IoT devices, we can simply plug them into the electrical grid, but this is not feasible in the ocean, especially in remote locations. Long-term reliable power supply is critical to realizing the OOT paradigm to support big ocean data gathering, and Ocean Motion Tech is here to fill this gap by providing an innovative modular, small-scale off-grid ocean wave energy device that can be installed on most oceanographic buoy platforms.
OOT is a promising solution that can revolutionize the way we manage and monitor the ocean environment. The benefits of OOT are manifold, from providing more accurate and detailed ocean data, reducing the cost of ocean monitoring, improving the efficiency of ocean-based operations, to mitigating the effects of climate change. OOT is a valuable tool for stakeholders and is essential for the sustainable development of the Blue Economy.
Please visit www.oceanmotion.tech to learn more.
The editing of this article was powered by deepsage.ai
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