Hello BlueRobotics Community,
I am working on a quick preliminary-pilot project to determine if a proposed location site in Monterey Bay would be a suitable candidate for future testing for various passive purple sea urchin trap designs to help test this method of urchin extraction to encourage bull and giant kelp recruitment and reforestation. The general area of interest is called Tanker’s Reef: two images - prior published map of SCUBA survey of the site by https://g2kr.com/ (Keith and his crew are doing great work and check out their site to learn how you can help their efforts to improve the kelp forest situation in Monterey Bay) & CDFW’s areal kelp bed survey mapping. It’s near shore in about ~30’ of water. I have been using a simple drop rig to lower an HD1080 camera to monitor bottom conditions, however, this method is slow and impractical for many obvious reasons. Our group is interested to learn if we can confirm the presence of urchin barrens through the use of an ROV. The next step would then be to use this barren confirmation data to support the application for a California CDFW Scientific Collection Permit to conduct passive baited urchin trap experiments. (Topside GPS can be used to pinpoint our lat/lon position for return visits.) If you have an ROV with video recording capability, live/work in the area, and have an afternoon to help this project out let me know and we can discuss how to make this happen. Many thanks for your time to read this note. Happy Diving!