Last month, NCCOS divers counted oysters at the bottom of Chesapeake Bay’s Tred Avon River to help train the next generation of oyster counters. A trainee had already counted the oysters, but needed the divers’ numbers to verify initial counts. Without complaint, the rookie welcomed the input that would make them better at counting. And why wouldn’t they? They are a robot.

Since 2020, a University of Maryland robotics team led by Dr. Miao Yu has been working to give Chesapeake Bay oyster growers some of the same smart tools that terrestrial farmers use to manage crops, such as drone-based surveying and GPS-guided harvesting. The team’s ultimate goal is to develop an autonomous underwater vehicle that can assess both the status of on-bottom oysters and their water quality.
Working off the pier of NCCOS’ Cooperative Oxford Laboratory in Oxford, Maryland, Yu’s team used a remotely operated underwater vehicle equipped with sonar and a video camera to teach a computer to gather information about river-bottom oysters within a designated area. In addition to counting, the system can collect data on oyster size, distribution, and the environment (e.g., salinity, dissolved oxygen), which can be used to create crop maps that facilitate precision farming.
Oyster aquaculture in Chesapeake Bay is booming. Maryland growers alone have seen a 28-fold increase in harvests from 2012 (3,340 bushels) to 2023 (94,286 bushels). The new technologies and methods developed by Yu and her team can help support the bay’s growing oyster aquaculture industry by providing the accurate data needed for efficient planting and harvesting.
