CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Imagine a fish finder that doesn’t just beep—it thinks. It travels hundreds of miles, tracks individual fish, and beams their locations to shore in real time. For anglers, that might sound like science fiction, but it’s real, and it’s happening right now off Florida’s east coast.
Meet the Wave Glider, a solar- and wave-powered robotic vehicle used in a cutting-edge research mission to track coastal fish with jaw-dropping precision. This autonomous glider, backed by NASA and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, just wrapped up a multi-year study following sharks, red drum, cobia, and more as they cruised the Atlantic waters near Cape Canaveral.
This glider is smarter than your fish finder
The Wave Glider looks like a surfboard towing a mini-submarine, but under the hood, it’s packed with high-tech gear. It carries acoustic receivers tuned to detect “pinging” sounds from tagged fish—each transmitter coded to a specific animal.
That means this isn’t sonar or side-scan—it’s smarter. When the Wave Glider hears a ping, it knows exactly what fish it is, where it’s been, and in some cases, where it was tagged—sometimes years ago and hundreds of miles away.
Over eight missions lasting up to a month each, the glider detected over 330 fish encounters across 20 species. That included high-interest species like:
- Blacktip and blacknose sharks
- Red drum
- Cobia
- Red snapper
- Even a loggerhead sea turtle
If you’re into chasing pelagics or tagging-and-releasing sportfish, this is the apex tech tracking them.
How It Works (and Why It’s So Effective)
The Wave Glider moves across the ocean by harnessing wave motion and solar power. Onboard are two types of underwater receivers that listen for fish tags within about 350 meters. As it glides along a preset transect path, it logs data on:
- Water temperature
- Chlorophyll levels (good proxy for bait)
- Dissolved oxygen
- Turbidity
- Ocean currents
- Even background sound (to monitor noisy habitats)
It sends all that info back via satellite—so researchers know not just where the fish are, but why they’re there.
And it doesn’t need a boat crew. No fuel stops. No sleep. Just continuous data collection over thousands of kilometers.
Can it identify fish species?
Yes—if they’ve been tagged. Every acoustic ping is like a license plate tied to a specific fish. In this study, the glider confirmed fish from 20 known species, thanks to cooperative tagging programs across the U.S. East Coast and even the Bahamas.
So while it doesn’t give you a sonar image or show untagged fish, the Wave Glider can positively identify sharks, gamefish, rays, and turtles that were tagged—even years earlier.
For example, one blacktip shark tagged off Cape Canaveral was detected more than 2,200 days later (over six years!).
Is it better than fixed fish tracking stations?
The short answer: not always—but it fills in crucial gaps.
Stationary acoustic arrays (like the Canaveral Array used in the study) are great for monitoring specific sites. But fish often travel far beyond those fixed listening posts.
That’s where the Wave Glider shines:
- Over 50% of fish it detected were outside the range of fixed receivers.
- It encountered tagged fish that had gone undetected for months or years.
- It even helped locate shed tags, which can indicate fish deaths or tag loss—something fixed stations often miss.
When comparing on a per-receiver basis, the glider matched the performance of stationary receivers in terms of unique fish and species detected per day.
What this means for anglers and fisheries
For recreational and commercial anglers, this tech offers a glimpse into the future of fish tracking. Imagine:
- Better understanding of when and where species like cobia, red drum, or sharks are moving
- Real-time updates for fishery managers to adjust regulations or closures
- Insights into environmental drivers that affect fish behavior (like oxygen drops or chlorophyll blooms)
It also provides data on the impacts of coastal development, dredging, and climate change on key fish species.
While the Wave Glider’s not something you can hook up to your chartplotter (yet), it represents a major step toward smarter, more responsive fisheries science.