2019-11-01 Outside

86 OUTSIDE MAGAZINE 11.19

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A

breakthrough, he said, was the
development process: open-
source design and crowdfund-
ing weren’t tactics that scien-
tists had considered.
Since Lang and Stackpole
began shipping Tridents to
Kickstarter backers last fall—
two years later than promised,
due to manufacturing delays—
they have sold thousands of
units, now priced at $1,695.
A partnership with National
Geographic supported the pur-
chase of 1,000 of them, for do-
nation to researchers, con-
servation groups, teachers, and
citizen scientists. Among the
beneficiaries was a biologist at
the University of California at
Santa Barbara who’s studying
yellow-legged frogs in Yosem-
ite National Park, where the en-
dangered amphibians spend
their winters in alpine lakes
capped by thick layers of ice and
snow. (Scuba-diving under the
ice to make observations would
be an enormous endeavor, but
deploying a Trident is relatively
easy.) Paying customers include
a Florida fire department that
bought two drones for special

search and rescue operations,

like when a car goes underwater.

Ultimately, Lang says, “the

size of the business opportu-

nity for us remains to be seen,”

though that isn’t preventing

Sofar from thinking big. The

company’s most ambitious con-

cept released so far is a global

network of Spotters to monitor

the waters around coral reefs,

which are dying off at a rapid

rate as oceans heat up. Scien-

tists studying the effects of cli-

mate change on corals generally

rely on estimates of sea sur-

face temperatures provided by

satellites, which miss impor-

tant fluctuations over short dis-

tances and brief periods of time,

and by sensors that must be at-

tached to reefs by divers and

later collected for data retrieval.

By adding temperature gauges to

hundreds of Spotters and moor-

ing them around major reef sys-

tems, researchers could monitor

localized conditions in real time

and gain knowledge about how

tides, winds, and other factors

might affect coral survival rates.

To observe corals, teams could

use Tridents, which aren’t sub-

ject to the same safety limita-

tions as scuba divers.

This summer, Sofar was ac-

tively pitching the project to

funders, citing the opportunity

to have an enormous impact

on coral-reef science for just a

few million dol-

lars. Central to the

proposal was the

idea that much

of the work could

be carried out by

citizen scientists,

who wouldn’t

need any spe-

cialized training,

since Spotters

and Tridents are easy to use. In

addition to reducing costs and

speeding up deployment, Lang

believes, the most important

benefit would be growing the

community that’s actively in-

vested in the health of reefs.

“When people participate in

the process, they care,” he says.

“The scientific method becomes

the message.”

It would be just like what he

and Stackpole dreamed of back

in their early days of tinkering

in the garage: thousands of their

robots on the front lines of ex-

ploration. O

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

MICHAEL ROBERTS IS THE

SHOWRUNNER OF THE

OUTSIDE PODCAST.

Clockwise: the

Saildrone team

in Alameda,

California, 2014;

Sofar’s Eric

Stackpole (left)

and David Lang

with an early

iteration of their

drone; Wendy

Schmidt aboard

the Falkor, 2014

On a whiteboard, some-

one has written a new

and improved motto for

innovation: “TEST FAST

• LEARN CHEAPLY.”