Harvesting

Fisherman John, State Senator Mark Montigny, 
and archaeologist Calvin Mires after a
roundtable discussion at the New Bedford
Fishing Heritage Center.

Back when I was in college, the cafeteria workers put inspirational quotes on the centerpieces of our dining room tables. There was one that really stuck with me, though I'm sure if I tried to relay it verbatim, I would mess it up. I can give you the main message. It had to do with farming - or rather, farming as a metaphor for all other pursuits. For creative professions like science, you are not always in a harvesting season. Some seasons are for planting, others for pruning. Sometimes, the most productive thing you can do is leave the plants in the ground and just let them grow. You'll get to harvest soon. 

Patience has always been hard for me. I'm one of those people who wants to harvest, harvest, harvest - in fact, my ambition almost always outpaces the resources at my disposal. That's the main reason why a random quote on a cafeteria table way back in college stuck with me. It actually helped. 

My lab has been doing a lot of planting recently. Calvin Mires, the archaeologist I work with, has been collaborating with the Center for Coastal Studies to put on a series of roundtable discussions with fishermen. We held a series of similar discussions last year, in order to glean information on "hangs." A "hang" is when a piece of fishing gear gets hung up on a shipwreck, and it's a major problem in Massachusetts. We have uncovered several contributing factors that cause "hangs" - cultural, logistical, and political. Calvin is collating the information into a manuscript that lays out why hangs happen and how we can change policies and practices across the state to prevent them.

Once it's finished, Calvin's manuscript will be quite the harvest. That hefty, oversized vegetable will mark a substantial contribution to anthropology and marine policy. I'm looking forward to seeing his draft take shape. But this week, Calvin's work turned out to yield another type of fruit entirely - one that I didn't expect. 

I'm working on a proposal right now that's focused on AI tools for Maritime Heritage Ecology. We're proposing to use AI to scour historical records and predict where shipwrecks will be located, based on the descriptions of where they sank. A lot of historical records are imprecise. They say things like "the ship sank 3 miles off of Provincetown," but there's no information on direction. Plus, that "3 mile" figure is probably a visual estimate and may not be accurate at all. 

Here's where Calvin's harvest comes in. As he's built trust with the fishing community, Calvin has gathered "hang" locations. Fishing captains, eager to help solve the problem of gear entanglement, have handed over the coordinates of their precious fishing spots to a complete outsider. He has accumulated a large database of points where nets have become ensnared, probably on shipwrecks. 

What if those "hang" locations could help us narrow the search areas for shipwrecks? It's certainly worth a try.

After conferring with Calvin and another collaborator last week, I was able to revise our proposal to be even better than before. With input from fishing "hangs," our AI model will be able to more precisely predict where shipwrecks are located. 

I am so grateful to have a team of impactful collaborators. I am especially grateful to the fishermen of Massachusetts, who have trusted us with their information and partnered with us to address a pressing environmental problem. If the new proposal is funded, we can keep moving forward together.