NOAA
Whale Safe Gear

Traditional practices, modern solutions

Project Type: 
Mechanical Engineering
Year: 
2021

Description

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tasks our team to develop whale safe fishing gear to prevent whale entanglements due to the fishing lines. The entanglements entail losing parts of the whales' bodies and eventually, their deaths. With the unusual amount of whale entanglements due to in 2016, the fishery faces strict regulations that impact the fishermen's livelihood. Keeping in mind of the necessity to create cost-effective devices, our team focuses on two different aspects of the solution: prevention and fail-safe. For prevention, the device “Taut Pot” will keep the line profile as straight as possible as it retracts and releases the line during various tide variation. As a fail-safe when entanglements do happen, the lock in "Whalebreak" will dissolve after a duration of time, disconnect the fishing line, and release the heavy weight of a crab pot.

Students

Mechanical Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Mechanical Engineering