ALAMEDA, Calif. — Two robotic sailboats trace lawn-mower-style paths across the violent surface of the Bering Sea, off the coast of Alaska. The boats are counting fish — haddock, to be specific — with a fancy version of the fish finder sonar you’d find on a bass fishing boat.
About 2,500 miles away, Richard Jenkins, a mechanical engineer and part-time daredevil, is tracking the robot sailboats on a large projection screen in an old hangar that used to be part of the Alameda Naval Air Station. Now the hangar is the command center of a little company called Saildrone.
Image: A Saildrone boat being carried back to its hangar in Alameda, Calif. The self-sailing vessel can gather research data much more cheaply than ships with crews. Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times
