My friend is an engineer and an avid kayaker in florida rivers. He wants some kind of mission while he goes around kayaking. He’s a computer vision expert and one of his ideas is an array of gopros or lidar on the bottom and top to scan the river beds. He’s also open to arming his kayak with sensors of whatever kind. Is there something that would be useful to have on such a kayak that people could do with such data? Let me know!
The https://thentrythis.org/projects/sonic-kayaks/ project comes to mind
"The Sonic Kayak is a musical and scientific instrument with which to investigate nature. Kayaks rigged with underwater environmental sensors generate live music from the marine world, providing the paddler with an extra dimension of senses with which to explore the underwater climate, while enabling citizens to gather important climate/environmental data.
The system is fully open source and is now equipped with sensors for water temperature, water turbidity, underwater sound, and above water air particulate pollution, all recorded continually with GPS, time and date, enabling fine-scale mapping. All the sensors are sonified in real-time to the paddler, meaning that they can hear changes in the environmental data as they happen."
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There are consumer grade sonar systems, including for fishing, that are available. These typically provide info on bottom conditions (muddy, rocky, etc) as well as depth and fish reflections. You can also tease out info on the type of fish from the shape of the reflection from their swim bladders.
There are sonar systems made for john boats, and these might be the most adaptable for kayaks.
There was this very involved project if your friend feels ambitious, but sidescan technology is far from cutting edge now.
Or your friend can look into this project. The cheap fish finder mentioned in it is an easy and cheap way to dip a toe and see if this is the right direction to take.
A sonar system could be used to map out seagrass meadows. There is interest in this sort of mapping, partly from a blue carbon standpoint, but also because it supports unique ecosystems, most charismatically manatees and dugongs.