Design of a low-cost and extensible acoustically-triggered camera system for marine population monitoring

As the health of the ocean continues to decline, more and more marine populations are at risk of extinction. A significant challenge facing conservation biologists is the ability to effectively monitor at-risk populations due to the challenges of the underwater environment. Obtaining visual data on a marine species typically requires significant time spent by humans observing in the field, which is both costly and time-consuming, and often yields a small amount of data. We present a low-cost, acoustically-triggered camera system to enable remote monitoring and identification of marine populations.