21 February 2020 / 13:47 (UTC-07 Tango 06) 02 Esfand 1398/26 Jumada t-Tania 1441/28 Wu-Yin 4718

“We have begun to set up machine learning deep neural networks to use artificial intelligence to classify the organisms, but do not have results yet.”-Brad Penta, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory

A swarm of veligers, a larval stage of mollusks.

The U.S. Navy’s (USN) Naval Research Laboratory has been conducting surveys of what it calls ocean swarms.  This is when small lifeforms cluster in an area of the ocean and cause havoc with electronic devices.

Intermediate trophic level (ITL) organisms are actually determined by their place in the food chain.  Civilian biologists might differ in their definition of an ITL but the USN considers everything from copepods to jellyfish as ITLs.  When they ‘swarm’ they render USN underwater electronic devices useless because of the way they refract the electronic signals.  Some of these creatures even produce their own electronic signals.

In 2019, the USN and the University of Mississippi conducted an ITL survey off the coast of Delaware.  They used not only ocean going detection devices but airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDaR) cameras, which used lasers to scan the ocean surface.  But this LiDaR was different, instead of the monochromatic laser the scientists used a multi-color LiDaR system they call Multi-Wavelength LiDaR Environment, or MuWLE.

The MuWLE is so sensitive the scientists report that they detected clouds in the air, under the aircraft, that could not be seen with human eyes!

This is a ‘Wirewalker’, it floats with the motion of the ocean, measuring conductivity, temperature, depth, light and acoustic backscatter, and dissolved oxygen.

The researchers are now trying to collate all the data they collected.  The goal is to provide the USN with new technology that can allow its ocean going vehicles to avoid ‘ocean swarms’.

Other ocean swarm research team players include Florida Atlantic University Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, University of South Alabama Dauphin Island Sea Lab, University of Southern Mississippi, Florida International University, and University of Delaware.

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