Stalking vampires of the Great Lakes: A systems engineering solution for monitoring invasive sea lamprey with e-skins
Sea lamprey, a “vampire fish”, is a parasitic invasive species in the Great Lakes region that threatens its ecosystems and billion-dollar fishery industry. The lamprey uses its suctorial mouth to attach to a host fish and drain the fish’s body fluids. In this talk we describe an end-to-end systems approach to the development of electronic skins (e-skins) for detecting the suctorial attachment by adult sea lampreys during their upstream migration for spawning. Such e-skins can be mounted at strategically chosen places, such as selective fishways, to facilitate measures (e.g., capture and population assessment) for sea lamprey control. We discuss the formulation of system design requirements via characterization of lamprey suction pressure dynamics, followed by the integration of sensor hardware development, signal processing, and machine learning to accomplish automated detection of lamprey attachment. Results from animal experiments demonstrate the promise of the developed e-skin technology in supporting sea lamprey control efforts and sustainable ecosystem management strategies in the Great Lakes region.