Faster, Better, Smarter, Cheaper? The Promise and Perils of Advanced Technologies in Fisheries Science

Emerging technologies have enormous potential to enhance our understanding of fish and their habitats, and are being adopted widely for in situ measurement, remote sensing, and lab investigations.  Technologies have great potential to improve our ability to understand fishes within their habitats, and to support fisheries management with information with unparalleled speed and at unparalleled spatial, temporal, and taxonomic resolutions.  However, adoption of new technologies may also be accompanied by new costs and data, analytical, and engineering challenges that must be overcome to realize their full potential.  Additionally technologies change quickly, and what is “advanced” today, may be antiquated in several years.  This tension between the promise and perils of adopting new technologies provides fertile ground to learn about new frontiers in fisheries science, and to explore the pitfalls that have been experienced by investigators at the cutting edge of their field.  The purpose of this symposium is to present information about exciting advances made possible by emerging technologies, including in situ platforms/sensors (e.g., telemetry, sonar, drifters, tags, autonomous vehicles, etc.), new remote sensing capabilities (e.g., green LiDAR, drones, etc.), and benchtop devices (e.g., next generation sequencers), and to have a frank discussion about challenges that must be overcome.