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Denise Coffey, Cape Cod Times EAST FALMOUTH — In a small room in the Falmouth Technology Park, Noah Van Home is assembling 450 sensors that will be scattered in waters from Maine to New Jersey to help scientists, fishermen and businesses in the blue economy learn more about the ocean. The sensors, or data loggers, are part of a project involving a private-public partnership funded by a $2 million grant from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative and spearheaded by the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance. Lowell Instruments of Falmouth has been hired to manufacture the data loggers that will collect bottom water temperature and dissolved oxygen readings. The program gives fishermen and scientists a look at what’s happening in the water, not just on top of it. Longtime lobsterman David Casoni agrees. He’s been fishing for 50 years, the last four of them with data loggers tied to his lobster traps. He started using them after an episode in September 2019 when lobstermen in Cape Cod Bay started pulling up traps with dead lobsters inside. No one knew what had happened, he said. “We thought it was pesticides,” he said. “Everything that could move, left. Clams and snails died. So did the animals that were caught in traps." “It raised alarm bells,” said Nick Lowell, founder and president of Lowell Instruments during an interview on Feb. 19. The cause wasn't pesticides; it was low oxygen concentrations at the bottom of the ocean. Data from the sensors will be collected by deck hubs on fishing vessels, fed to cloud storage, and made available to a host of users through open-source software. The Northeast Fisheries Science Center maintains the cyber infrastructure that takes the data from the sensors and makes it available to forecasters, scientists and fishermen. Building trust between fishermen and scientists “The relationship between fishermen and scientists has historically been fraught in our region, but it's two sides of the same coin,” said George Maynard, eMOLT coordinator with the Science Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. EMOLT is short for environmental monitors on lobster traps and large trawlers. Fishermen need to catch fish for their businesses to survive and thrive. Scientists are trying to understand the ocean to support sustainable seafood harvests and improve forecast models. While surface ocean data such as wind speed and water temperature are available from 30 buoys in the region, sub-surface data hasn’t been easy to come by. That’s where the eMOLT program comes in. Hundreds of fishermen collect the data from different places in the water column, and from areas up and down the coast. “Getting more information helps us improve our collective understanding of what’s going on,” Maynard said. "It's one way where scientists and fishermen are working more closely together. They see the value to their bottom line and the broader societal value." He likened the program to weather forecasting. Hundreds of weather stations across the country measure wind speed, direction, and barometric pressure which helps meteorologists understand what’s happening and what forecasts model predict will happen. Lowell Instruments responds to blue economy need Established in 2012, Lowell Instruments had its first big project creating what are called tilt current meters for the National Marine Fisheries Service. The three-foot-long instruments were designed to sit on the ocean floor and record the speed and direction of ocean currents. The company currently works on projects all over the world. In October, the company started gearing up for the eMOLT automated data collection system. They make the loggers, the deck data hubs and the software applications that allow the instruments to "talk" with one another. The system is designed to be user-friendly, fast and unobtrusive. The loggers are seven and 14-inches long, battery operated, and easily tied to fishing gear via zip lines. As fishermen pull up their traps or fishing gear, the loggers transmit data wirelessly to a 10-inch-wide boxlike structure in a ship's wheelhouse. It happens quickly, while fishermen take lobsters from their traps, change bait or check their gear. Lowell Instruments was part of the research and development on a smaller start-up grant to figure out what worked best on boats, Melissa Sanderson, COO of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen's Alliance, said on a phone call Feb. 17. Logger battery packs last about a year. When it’s time to replace them, Maynard sends out reminders and prepaid shipping labels for fishermen to mail to him. EMOLT services and checks the calibration on all sensors. Software updates are pushed out remotely. "The system gives fishermen tools and knowledge to interpret the data and make better decisions, to be more efficient," Sanderson said. Massachusetts seafood industry is crucial to the state economy Lowell Instruments founder and president Nick Lowell talks about different monitors being built by his company for commercial fishermen on Feb. 19, 2025, at the company headquarters in East Falmouth. The Massachusetts seafood industry is crucial to the state economy. The state’s ex-vessel value of landings (price fishermen receive for catch) in 2019 was $679.3 million, according to the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. It was second only to Alaska and driven by the high-value landings of lobsters and sea scallops. More:state seafood industry But declines in the populations of scallops and lobsters have been documented over the last few years, according to the state agency. While the reasons aren’t fully understood, some scientists and fishermen believe warming waters play a part. “Why do we care?” Lowell asked during a tour of the offices on Wednesday, Feb. 19. “If models can improve their (fishermen’s) chances of finding fish on the first try, they are spending less time, less fuel and catching more fish per unit of effort.” "We also recognize that the data we need to fully understand the environment and what’s going on with water in Gulf of Maine requires data from further north and further sourth – not just from Massachusetts fishermen,” Sanderson said. How many fishing vessels will participate? Data loggers and deck data hubs will be installed on 250 fishing vessels fishing close to the Canadian border, throughout the Gulf of Maine, at George’s Bank, along the outermost Cape Cod towns and down the continental shelf to the coast of New Jersey. They will be installed on dredges and used on a variety of fishing gear. Partners in the project include the Center for Coastal Studies, Coonamessett Farm Foundation, Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation, Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation, NOAA Fisheries New England/Mid Atlantic and the Haskin Shellfish Research Lab at Rutgers University. Data loggers and deck data hubs have been installed on about 30 fishing vessels so far, according to Lowell. He expects all of the installations to be completed by June. "We've had models for a long time, but not a lot of data to feed into them," Maynard said. "Who knows – someday there could be forecasts made – what fishermen could expect to see for conditions for the next few days."