this is KPBS Midday Edition. I am Maureen Cavanaugh. This week a citizen science project that's been in development for four years actually hits the beach in San Diego. Surfers will be able to start collecting data on ocean temperature and he -- device called Smartfin. The idea came about about this reaches found a gaping hole in their information about the ocean data on the coastal waters was hard to come by because expense of measurement devices can get moved or damaged by waves of the project is featured on the latest episode of the EBS series the crowd and the cloud airing tomorrow night. Joining me are Andy Stern, founder of Smartfin and in the Vulcan to the programprogram. Thank you for having me and Tyler [Indiscernible] am a postdoctoral researcher of -- with scripts institution of oceanography and scientific advisor with Smartfin. Tyler, welcome. Thanks. Is with the year. Andy, this is a big way for this margin project, web it is Mark, who is getting the Smartfin devices? This is absolutely thrilling for me. This is as you said after four years development we are finally ready to distribute Smartfin into the world and a partner of ours is the Surfrider foundation and distribution will be through there chapter infrastructure so our first ever distribution takes place tomorrow to the San Diego Surfrider chapter, they will receive send -- fans and the and await a customer tells with the smartphone looks like. Is as of as other that can be fitted onto a standard surfboard? Another part of ours -- is for all the world -- it is identical physically and -- performance to any payment surfboard fin and distributed with a matching fin which I tongue-in-cheek call a dumb fin -- symmetrically mounted by the surfer on it so surfers will notice no difference at all between the performance of this and a premium fin. Tether, how the servers operate the Smartfin? I know you turn it on was wiping it with the magnet and then ready to go in its collecting data so you surf like you would any other session and collect data for science. How does the data get transferred, who gets the information? Once the server gets out of the ocean to come back and put it back on the Charter and then download the data using their iPhone or any other smartphone device and he gets put up to the cloud and we are developing website and database where people have access to the data. Andy, your former Rajya Professor, how did you get involved with tracking ocean data? My, I don't have time to go into all that would we really know. All I can say is that I don't do, 6-7 years. And this happened to me in a moment and I'm not a voodoo type of guy. That I realized in one moment that the biggest challenge of our time is to respond in a truly meaningful way to the threats of climate change including to me the threats to human health which I worked on my whole life. I said I'm going to devote my life to raising awareness about that and hopefully initiating some kind of environmental activism and science-based policy so that we could create that in full response for the most common question I get an an IP most idea most environmental speakers get after a talk is what can I do comes really interesting but what can I do and I've never really had an answer to that question but Smartfin is something to do. The data is just as valuable from a surfer totally beginning never served before in their life as the pro- surfer. So it is not going to be everybody but it is something for some part of the population to do and contribute meaningfully. Scientists researchers have been trying to collect some of this information close to the shore, what kind of problems have they encountered when they are trying to collect data on temperature and acidity when it is really close to the shore? The ARPU is out there that can click data and you can attach things to something like a peer but the coastal zone especially in the surf so there's a lot of energy, there's a lot of currents, a lot of WASO buoys don't really last so long and centers can be covered in sand and things like that so there's a difficult race to monitor. We can also monitor from satellite but with satellite there's a lot of interference between the land and also the bottom of the ocean that is visible from satellite that can cause interference with their measurements. Just to have a vast array of sensors out there that can actually quantify the spatial and the temp oral so over space and time the changes in chemistry would be great. The chemistry their change is quickly more rapidly than open oceans and to understand how that's changing and understand how climate change will affect that is critical. Does it make a difference when servers are always moving around the data will be collected from one to give a point rather from an area of the ocean? Does that make the data less reliable? I don't think it makes this reliable. I think for instance now if you look along the California coast there's about four stations that are generating data on peers and they are generating data every half-hour or so so that's between here and up to symphysis go so if we can take surfers at eight more spots along the way that's doubling the amount of data and continue to do that so as many places as we can ask surfers out there the more data come at the more we will get to know actually what's happening. Andy, Tamara you said members of the San Diego Surfrider will get the Smartfin. While these eventually be available in stores? For other surfers? Yes, I get that question a lot. The answer is a notable this whenever be for sale. It is not a retail item, it will never be in a surf SHOP on a shelf next to other San Onofre, it is a research tool and the funding will never be from sales sales. It will all be from charitable donations, individuals, foundations and scientific grants. Just the Surfrider's will have this for now? For now and scientists. We will give any scientist in the world the technology to use. Tether, do have any specific projects in mind for this data that you're going to get back? There's a ton of different ways the data can be very helpful to scientist. For instance, coral reefs -- and in order monitor where they are bleaching you want to know how the temperatures changing so this monitoring patients across the Caribbean and across about the civic where you have to do sensors installed on reefs that are constantly giving temperature data back to scientist to maybe understand when it gets too hot to cause bleaching that only only covers a certain amount of reefs and surfers love to surf on coral reefs go there some of the best waves in the world so it is a perfect way for us to maybe monitor where order locally coral reefs might begin to bleach and that can inform scientists to maybe go and study the reefs that responsive teaching in different ways and can hope is understand what's going to happen in the future. This is a worldwide project. Hopefully. We would love to have these deploy distributed worldwide in a few years. After number years, very exciting. Congratulations. Congratulations. I've been speaking with Andy Stern, Tyler Cyronak, postdoctoral researcher with the scripts institution of oceanography, the Smartfin is featured in tronics episode of the PBS series the crowd in the cloud cloud comets, it is about citizen scientist projects in the show errs at 11:00. Thank you very much. Thank you.
A citizen science project in development for four years is hitting San Diego's beaches this week, as researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography reach out to surfers to gather data about the region's coastal waters.
Oceans absorb some of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which makes the water more acidic. Climate scientists are interested in tracking oceans' changing acidity, but it can be difficult to gather data close to shore, where expensive measurement devices can get moved or damaged by waves.
Retired neurology professor Andy Stern founded the nonprofit Smartfin to close that data gap, collaborating with scientists at Scripps and surfboard fin manufacturer Futures Fins to design a fin with a built in sensor to measure water temperature and acidity. Surfers can upload the data gathered while in the ocean through a smartphone app.
Smartfin is distributing several dozen of the fins to members of the San Diego County chapter of the Surfrider Foundation Wednesday, with plans to reach out to other chapters through 2018. It will also give out the devices, which are worth about $325, to scientists around the world by request. The scientists and San Diego surfers will not have to pay for the devices, according to Stern, who said Smartfin is supported by grants, donations and corporate sponsorship.
"Smartfin will never be for sale and never found in a surf shop on the shelf next to another fin — it is a research tool, and actually won’t be owned by anyone," he said. "Scientists will always get them for no charge, and the data gathered will be open-sourced — no charge."
The project is featured on the latest episode of the PBS series "The Crowd and the Cloud," which will air on KPBS-TV Wednesday at 11 p.m.
Stern and Scripps postdoctoral researcher Tyler Cyronak join KPBS Midday Edition on Tuesday with more on what scientists hope to learn from Smartfin's data.
