It's incredible to actually be able to do it.

A Smartfin is a surfboard fin.

You clip it on the bottom of your board and you go out for your surf session.

It has technology that measures ocean pH, salinity, ocean temperature, and very detailed wave characteristics.

So there will be an enormous amount of data.

The reason these parameters are important is because they are shifting directly as a result of climate change.

We have detailed information about the deep ocean but very limited accurate information about the near shore.

Satellites can't be really accurate with data in that narrow zone and the other way is ocean buoys.

And they're just not deployed at the coast.

Bingo, Smartfin can fill that gap.

Collecting oceanic data is a very time consuming, expensive process.

This is like, you just need to know how to surf.

The data moves from your fin to your phone via Bluetooth.

And from your phone it goes up to our servers where everything's processed.

I had to develop sensors that don't affect the surfboard.

Nobody's gonna surf a fin that is not a standard foil.

Aside from that LED right there that's blinking that tells you that there's like some sort of technology in there, you wouldn't know the difference.

So we've got a test tank set up now.

And we're just trying to look at the precision and accuracy of the, um, instrument itself.

Things are looking pretty promising.

As a scientist it's pretty exciting to be able to get data over these different time and space scales.

I mean the fact that you can go out and surf and contribute to understanding what's actually happening out there is incredible.

I'm not a surfer, I know nothing about surfing.

I know I look like a surfer, but I'm not.

Surfers are very influential and care deeply about the environment and want to be talking about it.

So Smartfin is just a tool to do that in a more concrete way.