The Persistent Aquatic Living Sensors (PALS) programme will make use of this information to transform these creatures into self-sustaining populations of underwater spies.
JOSH GABBATISS: ‘The US military is turning to fish and other sea life to help them monitor the activity of their enemies in the oceans. Marine creatures are well adapted to their environment, and scientists want to employ their sensory abilities to pick up signals that might be missed by conventional technology. This could mean anything from monitoring fluctuations in schools of sea bass to microbes responding to the magnetic signatures emitted by submarines.
The Persistent Aquatic Living Sensors (PALS) programme will make use of this information to transform these creatures into self-sustaining populations of underwater spies… A total of $45m (£35m) has now been distributed to five research teams, each of which is working on a particular organism and developing technologies to monitor them and beam information back to the scientists. One team is analysing the “booms” made by territorial fish known as goliath groupers, which they think could provide information about approaching drones or submarines.
Another is examining the noises made by snapping shrimp, 200-decibel pops that could work as a natural form of sonar… Another project being developed by the agency involves using insects loaded with synthetic viruses to spread genetic changes to plants growing in fields. That initiative, dubbed Insect Allies, has faced controversy as scientists raised concerns that instead of being used in agriculture it could lead to the development of “a new class of biological weapon”.’ SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEO: