May 29, 2018 — Sometimes a chat over the fence is all it takes to set great things in motion. Fairhaven resident Karl Edminster was talking with his neighbor, marine researcher Emily Keiley, when she mentioned that SMAST had an underwater cable that had suffered damage on a fisheries survey cruise. She knew Karl’s job had something to do with electrical work. He said he’d take a look.

In fact, Karl is president of Electromechanica, a high-tech design-and build engineering outfit based in Mattapoisett. They spliced the cable.

“But we told them we do more than fix cables,” Karl told me. In fact, the perfectly anonymous space the company occupies in the Mattapoisett industrial park produces an array of highly sophisticated devices for an impressive list of clients.

The damaged cable belonged to an underwater camera system that SMAST researchers were using to assess the health of the sea scallop biomass.

“It had older low-resolution analog cameras and a digital still camera that they lowered and triggered remotely,” Karl said. This meant that scientists could not see the images until the cameras were retrieved.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times