Enlisting Fish to Spy for Us?

Symbiotic relationship, just passing, or dinner served? (Jeff Milisen/CATERS)

One of the “telltale” signs that there could be “something” lurking in the bush, containing birds, are a bunch of birds suddenly “jumping into flight”.  A more famous event came in advance of the tsunami of 2004. There were reports that before the tsunami hit, most the animals had escaped the area.

The animals detected the sounds and vibrations associated with the waves. Naturally, the got out of the way and moved to safer grounds.

Now, the military is going forward with researching a similar concept. In this case, using sea animals to detect submarine and underwater drone activity.  Certain animals react to sound, vibrations, and other changes in the environment. One idea is to leverage this ability via how sea animals would react to detecting underwater underwater activity. Success would mean that we’d cheaply extend our search area by tracking sea animal behaviors.

From Fox News:

“The U.S. Navy’s current approach to detecting and monitoring underwater vehicles is hardware-centric and resource intensive. As a result, the capability is mostly used at the tactical level to protect high-value assets like aircraft carriers, and less so at the broader strategic level,” PALS program manager Lori Adornato said in a statement. “If we can tap into the innate sensing capabilities of living organisms that are ubiquitous in the oceans, we can extend our ability to track adversary activity and do so discreetly, on a persistent basis, and with enough precision to characterize the size and type of adversary vehicles.”

If successful, fish could potentially serve as cost-effective detectives in hard-to-reach places as well as in protecting critical American assets; and have the capacity to navigate far more freely than any human being.

You could read details here.

Category: Navy