Collaborative Research: Multisensory guidance of marine animal navigation and prey capture

了解动物如何在水下航行不仅本身很吸引人，而且有助于水下航行器，机器人和水面船只的仪器设计，影响渔业管理，并有助于保护海洋环境。 鲨鱼被选中来展示它们如何航行。 虽然它们无法探测到一英里外的一滴血，但正如人们常说的那样，鲨鱼确实有令人印象深刻的猎物跟踪能力。 鲨鱼在世界各地的渔业中很重要，近几十年来已严重枯竭，经常被其他渔业当作不想要的副渔获物。 然而，它们是维持健康生态系统所必需的顶级掠食者。 这个研究项目将展示鲨鱼如何在狩猎行为中使用所有的感官，从最初的猎物检测开始，通过跟踪和定位，并以打击猎物结束。 为了更全面的了解，我们比较了几种鲨鱼，它们似乎使用不同的感官，主要是因为它们在不同的栖息地专门捕食不同的猎物。 利用马萨诸塞州和佛罗里达的独特测试设施，已经组建了一个感官和鲨鱼生物学专家小组，其中包括正在接受有关活鲨鱼工作所需的许多技术方法培训的研究生。 这项研究直接涉及本科生和高中生，并为所有年龄段的其他学生和公众提供广泛的宣传。 积累的知识应导致鲨鱼导航和捕食模型，可用于鲨鱼的保护，保护人类，和水下转向算法的工程设计。 在未来的电视节目和视频纪录片中，这项研究的必然呈现将向广大公众传播新的知识，包括鲨鱼和严谨的科学。

Understanding how animals navigate under water is not only fascinating in its own right, it also contributes to instrumentation designs of underwater vehicles, robots and surface vessels, impacts management of fisheries, and helps protect the marine environment. Sharks have been chosen to demonstrate how they navigate. While they can not detect a drop of blood a mile away, as often stated, sharks do have impressive prey tracking capabilities. Sharks are important in fisheries worldwide and have been severely depleted in recent decades, often taken as unwanted by-catch in other fisheries. Yet, they are essential top predators needed to maintaining a healthy ecosystem. This research project will show how sharks use all their senses in hunting behavior, starting with initial prey detection, through tracking and locating, and ending with striking their prey. For more complete understanding, we compare a few shark species that appear to use their senses differently mostly because they specialize in different prey in different habitats. A team of experts in sensory and shark biology, using unique testing facilities in Massachusetts and Florida, has been assembled including graduate students being trained in the many technical approaches needed for work on live sharks. The research directly involves undergraduate and high school students and provides extensive outreach to other students of all ages and to the public in general. The accumulated knowledge should lead to a model of shark navigation and predation that can be used for the conservation of sharks, protection of humans, and the engineering design of underwater steering algorithms. The inevitable presentation of this research in future television programs and video documentaries will disseminate new knowledge to the public at large, both of sharks and of rigorous science.