Even Fish Can’t Escape the Grasp of GPS Fleet Tracking
We’ve blogged lots of times about how GPS fleet tracking technology is used to follow the habits of all kinds of creatures, from vultures to wolves to sharks to elephants. Attaching GPS devices to these wild things isn’t easy, but it can be done.
Now biologists Down Under have managed to use GPS fleet tracking (GPS school tracking?) to monitor the foraging habits of the huge, lumbering sunfish. They’re tracked only near the surface because a salt-water switch only turns on the GPS tracking device only when the fish is near the surface.
Speaking of fish and GPS in the same sentence, did you ever think you’d be busted for “cruelty to crabs”? Or that the federal government would limit the amount of fish you caught by species?
Anglers don’t have to worry about those kinds of restrictions — yet. But a hilarious column in Florida’s Naplenews.com speculates on what could happen if the ’crats take over regulation of the fish in our nation’s waterways.
While the column is tongue-in-cheek, we know that GPS fleet tracking systems are already in use aboard oceangoing ships and boats. Installing GPS tracking devices on cargo containers is becoming routine. But the technology also will be used soon for finding a ship’s most valuable cargo: its crew.
A British company has devised a system that swings into action if a crew member goes overboard (or MOB, as sailors say for “man overboard”). It uses the same type of real time technology found in GPS fleet tracking – but it’s waterproof.
The device is in the development stage, but consists of a central tracking unit on the ship and all-weather GPS fleet tracking units worn by each crew member. According to the European Space Agency:
“When a man falls overboard the mobile unit is detached automatically from the life jacket when it inflates, and on hitting the water it starts transmitting its position to the central unit on the ship. The signal is plotted as a waypoint on the ships navigation device, and the ship can easily return to the position of the MOB. The signal is transmitted on an open radio channel so the MOB position can also be picked up by other ships.”
The development firm is seeking funding partners to continue developing the system, and it won the Galileo Master prize in the European Satellite Navigation Competition 2008. The product, which uses technology similar to that found in GPS fleet tracking systems, is targeted at commercial fishing boats, merchant shipping, offshore exploration (oil rigs), passenger vessels and the leisure yachting market.
Perhaps such a system could be devised for cruise ship crews and possibly passengers, considering the alarming number of people-overboard incidents in recent years. Imagine ship captains or rescue-helicopter pilots locating someone floating in the ocean in real time, much like you’d find online in a GPS fleet tracking system.
And as for the fish? We hope the feds have better things to do than get involved in fishing expeditions. And that the sunfish find their food without any interference from satellites circling the earth
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