Smartfin: Surfers Monitoring Ocean Health

The ocean serves as a vast heat sink and absorbs much of the excess heat and carbon dioxide from global warming. Although the ocean seems vast, it is acutely sensitive to human impacts. Thus, having a better understanding of how the chemistry of seawater is changing will provide an important basis for developing responses to counteract the effects of climate change. Smartfin is developing surfboard fins with sensors that measure multiple ocean parameters, including salinity, pH, temperature, GPS location, oxygen levels, chlorophyll, and wave characteristics.  The data collected by surfing citizen scientists are available to ocean scientists across the globe whose research will be critical to mitigating the effects of climate change.

Smartfin was founded by Dr. Andew Stern and is an initiative of the arts-based nonprofit he also founded, Lost Bird, which is devoted to raising environmental awareness by using art to connect people with the Earth.  Dr. Stern was an Associate Professor of Neurology at the University of Rochester, but now devotes himself to Lost Bird and Smartfin full time.