Lesson 44

Card 5.9: Ghost Gear and Ocean Plastics

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Format: Short seminar + design exercise

Time: 40 min

Prerequisites: Card 0.1

Core Question

Lost fishing gear keeps fishing forever: nets and traps that catch and kill with no one collecting. Recovering it is dangerous diver work. What makes ghost gear such a stubborn problem, and what would a robot need to help?

Resource (before class, ~10 min)

Read the provided ghost gear overview. Note the scale estimate, why gear gets lost, why recovery is hazardous, and one existing recovery program.

Activity: Requirements, Not Solutions

In teams, write the REQUIREMENTS for a ghost-gear recovery ROV mission: what it must find, cut, grab, lift, and avoid (entanglement is the vehicle-killer; your tether is a liability here). Output is a requirements list, not a design; ranking which three requirements are hardest is the point. Compare lists across teams.

Prep Notes (your artifact)

One claim about why this problem persists despite everyone agreeing it is bad, plus one honest question.

Clearing This Card

Prep notes plus your team’s ranked requirements list with your name on the parts you argued for.

If You Miss This Class

Write your own ranked requirements list solo; same prep notes.

Why This Matters

Manipulation tasks in competition frequently simulate exactly this work, and the requirements exercise is a dress rehearsal for design specs, which the company is adopting this year. Notice this card made you write requirements before solutions; hold onto how that felt.