BANGOR, Maine In the summer of 2009, scientists with the Maine Department of Marine Resources were eager to pin down how Maines lobster population might be affected by the number of traps being set to catch the tasty crustaceans. Given the importance of the lobster fishery to the states economy the 2011 catch was worth $345 million the research was driven by concerns about the industrys long-term sustainability.

Getting an accurate buoy count would give the scientists a benchmark for exploring a working hypothesis that an equal number of lobsters might be caught with fewer traps, which would decrease costs and add efficiencies to lobster-fishing operations.

But as researchers began their trap study in a 3.5 square nautical mile section off Tenants Harbor, they faced an obvious challenge: In a constantly moving ocean, how do you count thousands of pot buoys without losing track? Hand-counting from a boat would be prone to miscounting. Relying on lobster licensing records, on the other hand, also is unreliable, since the number of traps can vary widely in relation to the seasonal movement of lobsters. In other words, its not a simple multiplication problem.

DMR researchers turned to Kappa Mapping Inc., a woman-owned business in Bangor with eight employees, to solve the problem. Kappa had revenue of $754,000 in 2011, a 28 percent increase from the year before.

The 2009 project illustrates how advances in technology have revolutionized the mapping industry, providing useful information to researchers, engineers, municipal planners, architects and others that 15 years ago would have cost a small fortune to present visually if at all.

We used traditional technologies in an innovative way, says Claire Kiedrowski, president of the nine-year-old company located in the heart of Bangors downtown. In the 2009 Tenants Harbor study, Kappa contracted with James W. Sewall Co. to take aerial photographs of the harbor once a week for several consecutive weeks in July and August. The specs were exacting: The images were to be taken at low tide, calm seas, early morning and overcast skies to minimize sun glare on the water.

The traditional technology Kappa used in the DMR problem falls under the tongue-twisting tag of photogrammetry and involved stitching together multiple overlapping photos to create a high-definition composite image of the Tenants Harbor study zone. The innovative part, which earned Kappa a prestigious award in 2010 from MAPPS, a national association of photogrammetry, mapping, and geospatial firms, involved matching buoys in adjacent photos and using navigation-grade GPS photo positions to triangulate the imagery.

Kappas mapmaking team in Bangor then meticulously created an accurate map showing the location of each and every buoy in the waters off Tenants Harbor ranging from 9,000 to a high count of 10,450 early in the study period.

Kiedrowski describes that 2009 project as not that big for us, but it clearly opened the eyes of DMRs marine scientists to the value of using photogrammetry as a highly accurate tool for better understanding the lobster fishery. The next fall, DMR hired Kappa to manage a similar study of traps along the entire coast of Maine in this instance, using an advanced large-format digital camera to collect three separate spectrums of visual data true color, color infrared and black-and-white at the same time. That information is being used to evaluate the risk of endangered right whales becoming entangled in lobster trap lines.

Most recently, Woolpert Inc., a prominent aerial photography firm based in Dayton, Ohio, has signed up Kappa Mapping and Shyka, Sheppard & Garster Land Surveyors as subcontractors for a five-year orthoimagery mapping of the entire state. That project, which is being coordinated by the Maine GeoLibrary, eventually will make available high-resolution aerial photographs of Maine towns and cities that can be used for planning, assessing, code enforcement, emergency management, growth projections or management of natural resources and agriculture. The data also can be used as the base map for E-911, roads and other uses requiring high accuracy imaging.

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Bangor company finds success with high-tech mapmaking