A Columbia University student project in aquaculture
Better ocean data for choosing where aquaculture farms go.
On land, farmers can test soil before they plant. In aquaculture, picking a site in open water still involves a lot of guesswork. We're building small, low-cost buoys that measure ocean conditions, and we're talking to people across the aquaculture world to learn whether that data would actually help.
Why aquaculture matters
We think aquaculture is one of the most important paths to a more sustainable food supply. Good farmland is getting harder to come by, and rising sea levels are putting coastal land at risk. At the same time, aquaculture farms keep getting more efficient, which is a big reason the industry is growing so fast.
Less farmlandRoom to grow food on land keeps shrinking.
Rising seasCoastal land is under more pressure every year.
More efficient farmsAquaculture is getting better at producing more with less.
What we're exploring
01
How aquaculture sites get picked
We want to understand how growers, researchers and extension staff choose and monitor aquaculture sites today.
02
Where the data runs thin
Public ocean data is great in some places and sparse in others. We want to know which readings would change an aquaculture decision.
03
Whether a buoy fleet could help
If small buoys could map conditions across a wide area, could aquaculture farmers use that to find better sites?
Where we're at now
We're in the prototyping stage. The core of our buoy is an inexpensive but accurate GPS unit we built from the ground up. It started as an offline tracker for animals, and we're now adapting it to log ocean conditions from the water.
Before we go further, we want to hear from people who work in aquaculture. How useful would this kind of data be to you? And if it were a product, would it be something you'd be interested in?
Honest answers help us the most, including "this wouldn't help me."
About us
We're Tyler and Nick, two students at Columbia University working on Project: OceanReadings together. We both love fishing and spending time on the ocean, and we started this project because we wanted to put that interest toward something useful for aquaculture.
Tyler TubmanStudent · Columbia University
Nick [LAST NAME]Student · Columbia University
Questions or thoughts? Reach us at hello@oceanreadings.com