Finding Fish Using Satellites

Suppose you are the captain of a commercial fishing boat harbored in Seattle, Washington, or Gloucester, Massachusetts, or Puerto Lopez, Ecuador, or Durban, South Africa, or any of a thousand other coastal cities that commercial fishing vessels call home port. Where will you go to fill your hold with fish for sale? Which fish will you catch? These questions have been answered over centuries of time by fishermen based on experience and reports of what others were catching at the moment and where. Today, modern fishermen use not only their knowledge of the seasons and fish behavior but also satellite-based remote sensing tools to predict the probable location of various fish types. Fish respond seasonally, even diurnally, to environmental changes such as water temperature, available food supply, and various types of currents. In this lesson, students will obtain and analyze satellite imagery of sea surface temperature to predict the probable location of schools of marketable fish species within reach of home port by commercial fishing boats.

Next Generation Science Standards addressed in this lesson:
    HS-PS4-5.A     HS-PS4-5.C     HS-LS2-1     HS-LS2-6     HS-ESS2-2