Hi All
Over the last couple of years. I have been refining some ROV mounted urchin culling tools. As some of you may be aware sea urchins numbers , native and invasive alike, have exploded in many parts of the world, driven in large part by global heating causing warmer waters to extend habitat range and also over-fishing removing the normal predator chain. The over grazing of the kelp beds has resulted in many thousands of square kilometers of barren reef and boulders with many commercially valuable species such as lobster, crabs, crayfish, abalone and many fish species largely disappearing from those areas.
After a lot of trial and error, I have settled on a couple of primary tools driven by a BR M200 motor. The one I use on urchin barrens but can also reach urchins in crevices is a 75 mm circular saw which even a fleeting contact with can inflict a deadly wound on the urchin. The second one is a 30 mm diameter hole saw which is better for reaching into tight spots and also through the kelp.
Unfortunately for these trials, I didn’t have a BR2 or my normal BR custom version available so I used another smaller ROV necessitating the making of a custom PCB attached to a gripper cable on one ROV and on the one in the photo, simply using the lights to tell an ESP32 to turn the M200 on and off. The electronics work fine as do the BR components being M200, ESC, water tight tubes, penetrators. The only weak link in the equation is the human and it would take someone better on the controller than me to cut down the transition time between urchins. Ultimately, the logical direction is the have it all AI controlled.
I am sure many of you out there can think of lots of refinements that would improve what it is I am doing. I hope the video in the link which is just a sample from the last couple of days gets you thinking of how you might do that. I welcome any and all solutions to help address what is a global problem.
John Griffiths
