- I never would imagine how many different groups of people
would be involved, saving sea turtles.
(peaceful music)
- People love sea turtles.
And I don't know why people love sea turtles,
but they're an important thing to many, many people
and it's not just around the coast.
You can go anywhere in this country
and people have an affinity for sea turtles.
And that's great, 'cause if that's the thing
that gets people paying attention
to some of these larger conservation issues,
then sea turtles are it.
- Sea turtles play such an important role
in maintaining the environment in the ocean.
- They actually transport nutrients from the ocean,
to the beach ecosystem and they help maintain
healthy coral reef populations,
they help keep the sea grass well grazed and healthy.
A healthy ocean, means a healthy planet
and that also means healthy people.
(peaceful music)
So the Mexican government has protected sea turtles
since 1990 and since then we know
that their populations have been increasing.
- We have collaborated with people working
in nesting grounds and in the work we do
in the feeding grounds,
plus the work that the Mexican government is doing
to protect the turtle.
The combination of these three things,
actually work to bring a specific green turtle
back to a stable level and we are hoping
to see the population increase.
- But they're still being captured
as incidental bycatch in fisheries,
and primarily in gill nets and entangling nets.
- We have to figure out a way
to allow the fisherman to keep using the nets.
Maybe we just fix the nets,
because if they can't use the nets,
then their economy crashes
and then all sorts of bad things happen.
- And so that's why we've developed solar powered nets
to reduce that bycatch
and help the populations fully recover.
- So the first studies with illuminated nets
were done with the LED lights,
but the problem with those lights
is that they have batteries
and then they add a lot of weight to the net.
- I realized it was totally impractical
to ask fishers to replace 200 batteries,
you know per every two weeks of fishing effort.
And so I knew then we needed another option
and I figured solar might be one of them.
- Such as yours. - Right, right.
- Because solar's great, it's getting now quite cheap,
and it's just how we can apply it.
When I first met Jesse, he was interested
in using the lights to warn turtles
about the fishing nets
and that's a pretty challenging thing to do.
Solar cells, like most electronic products,
they don't like being out there in the ocean
amongst all that salt water.
And also, the fishing nets are quite a distance down
and one of the problems of that
is that there's not a lot of sunshine down there.
One of the really important things we realized,
pretty early on, was we had to reduce the amount of power
that the lights were using.
By pulsing the lights, we can reduce the amount
of power the lights use.
And that's really important for the solar
because we can then shrink the solar down to a size
that was compatible with the buoys
that will be employed on the fishing nets.
- Stuart had contacted me because I have expertise
in sensory systems for humans and different animals.
I've also done things that are implantable,
which may seem like it doesn't quite fit,
but I make technology and electronics
that go inside the body,
which is also a warm and salty environment.
We had to constrain how much battery power
we could incorporate because we didn't want the technology
to be so big, it was cumbersome for the fishermen.
We were able to put small computers into the buoys
and ten years ago, that would have been impossible.
- [Jesse] And I think one thing that we have done,
is we have worked really hard to earn the trust
of fishermen throughout Baja, California, Mexico.
- Jesse, through us, through a group of them together,
brought in the fishermen at the very early stage
of this project, so the fishermen got involved
into the design of the light
and how to integrate the lights into the net.
- And what we're looking at is
some of the other technologies that we've been developing.
For instance, the space use,
where we have similar problems.
We have to put the small solar cells,
we have to deploy them in a very difficult environment,
and we have to have technology that also is flexible,
both in terms of how we use the cells
and the cells themselves.
You could say we're pulling the technology
from outer space to inner space.
- A big problem we ran into with trying
to put solar in the device was we didn't get a lot
of power out of it.
And that's because the solar panels were flat
and so we looked into flexible silicon.
- Normally a silicon solar cell will be quite rigid
and it might be the thickness of a credit card,
so it's relatively thick.
Yeah, so this is a solar cell. - Okay.
- And the trouble with it is, it's a little bit stiff.
- Is that right? - So if you try and bend it
it'll break, so try flexing that a few times
and see what happens.
(panel shatters)
- Whoa!
- (laughing) So obviously we need thinner solar cells.
- Whoa!
(laughing)
I wasn't expecting that.
- For these particular projects,
we get the thickness of the solar cell down
to that of about a human hair.
And so it becomes, it goes from something being quite rigid,
to something almost as flexible as a piece of paper.
(peaceful music)
- We try to work in locations that are the most urgent.
So in other words, where the most sea turtles
are being entangled and killed in gill nets
and in other types of fisheries.
Right now, we're seeing about a 65% to 70% reduction
in sea turtle bycatch through the technologies
that we've developed and I'm really excited
to see how we take that 65% and make it 95% or 100%.
And so last year we were super excited
because the first time we ever put a solar powered light
on a fishing net, was done with our class
and I let our students do it.
- ASU having all these different experts,
having all those people that we can go
and we can talk to, just by stepping out the door,
made the project possible.
- I never anticipated that I'd be working
with solar engineers and visiting places
such as the solar power lab.
Different cultures, different professions,
different expertises, and everybody brings a little bit
to the table, but I think that's the best way to solve,
really complex problems, is bringing a bunch
of diverse stakeholders to the table
and everybody contributing.
- Oh, I think the future is, future's very bright.
Pun intended.
(upbeat music)