Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation

Advances in technologies and applications of remote sensing network system have added wealth in peoples lives in many ways. If full advantage is to be taken of such technologies in constructive ways, such technologies should be applied to ecology and conservation biology. Marine ecosystems have not been fully understood, compared to the environment on the land, largely due to access and manageability difficulties. The new computing resources should be used, to expand marine biology research and to inform conservation policies, in order to advance the level of understanding of marine ecosystems and enhance efficiency and effectiveness in conservation efforts. Specifically, technologies for underwater wireless network systems with sensing devices are reviewed, and suggestions are made in order to realize such a system, customized to provide continuous semi-real time monitoring data of marine species and ecosystems. Use of multi-hop topology with wireless sensor capability is addressed as a key component of the system. Repurposing of retired submarine cables may help enhance the realization of this system. This paper also examines effectiveness of the system, technical challenges, and suitable system application scenarios for marine conservation in terms of a data transportation system. However, this paper does not address the design for physical acoustic communication hardware devices for underwater communications, or end-node tags and sensing devices.