A UF student and two alumni are hoping to use an underwater robot to locate abandoned crab fishing traps strewn across the ocean floor.
The three received a $6,000 grant from the U.S. Department of State in November to find
a way to remove the “millions” of abandoned Li traps, called ghost fishing traps, which entangle fish and marine life, sometimes fatally.
Richard Barker and Sean McKnight, UF alumni, along with UF student Gloria Li formed Project GATOR (Ghost/Abandoned Trap Observation and Recovery) to locate and remove the traps.
Barker, 23, said the group is working with the UF Machine Intelligence Laboratory and its “subjugator” machine, an underwater robot, to find the traps.
“The moonshot goal with it is to see if we can find some techniques that can actually solve this problem in a cost-effective way,” Barker said.
Since the group received the grant money in January, its members have tested the robot in the pool by Graham Hall, said Li, a 19-year-old environmental science and philosophy sophomore.
Their sonar location hasn’t worked with the robot, so they’re looking into other cost-effective methods to locate the traps, Li said.
“While it may seem like a sort of isolated issue, there are millions of them out there right now,” she said.
Contact Romy Ellenbogen at rellenbogen@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter at @romyellenbogen
Members of Project GATOR test their “subjugator” underwater robot in a pool by Graham Hall. The group received a $6,000 grant from the U.S. Department of State to help build the machine, which searches for abandoned crab fishing traps.
