NOAA Is Using Drones To Track Migrating Gray Whales

[Judi Lynn]

NOAA Is Using Drones To Track Migrating Gray Whales

Gray robots, gray whales, can’t lose

By Kelsey D. Atherton Posted Yesterday at 3:50pm



Gray Whale Mother And Calf NOAA

Ahab would give up his peg leg for views like this. A team with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration used a drone to catch a better glimpse of migrating gray whales, capturing pictures of a mother and calf. The drone flyover was part of a long-standing research project in Baja California, Mexico, where scientists track the migrations of gray whales up north to the Arctic.

There is only so much one can tell about a whale seen through binoculars on land. The drone, a hexarotor spinning its six blades over and over, was able to film the whales from above, which let scientists look at their bodies and evaluate just how much blubber they had accumulated, and from that, what the survival odds are for mothers and calves. More blubber means better food and better chances, important information to have when making sure a once-endangered population is thriving.

Flying the drone at least 120 feet above the whales, the scientists got their pictures without disturbing the creatures. The drone carried an altimeter, so it would know at what precise height an image was taken, allowing comparison between photographs to account for different flight altitudes. There have been other studies of whales using drones (like this one centered around whale snot). Projects like that, and the research done by NOAA this spring shows drones can have a role to play in tracking marine populations.

http://www.popsci.com/noaa-tracks-whales-drones

(Short article, no more at link.)

[Judi Lynn]

1. Scientists use unmanned aerial vehicle to study gray whales from above

Public Release: 28-May-2015
Scientists use unmanned aerial vehicle to study gray whales from above

A rare opportunity to study how the environment limits the growth of a recovered population of large whales

NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service

One recent spring day, John Durban, a NOAA Fisheries marine mammal biologist, stood on the California coast and launched an unmanned aerial vehicle into the air. The hexacopter--so called because it has six helicopter-type rotors--zipped over the ocean and hovered above a gray whale mother and her calf. The pair was migrating north from their calving grounds off Baja California, Mexico, to their summer feeding grounds in the Arctic.

NOAA Fisheries scientists have stood at this point of land each year for the past 22 years, binoculars in hand, to estimate the number of gray whale calves born each year. That's an important step in monitoring the ups and downs of the population. But scientists would like to understand more completely what causes those ups and downs, and this year, with the addition of the hexacopter, they hope to find out.

As the hubcap-sized hexacopter hovered high above the whales it shot straight-down photos from a digital camera mounted in its belly. In addition to a camera, the hexacopter also carried a very precise pressure altimeter, allowing scientists to know the exact altitude at which each image was taken. Later in the lab, they would analyze the images, measuring the length and girth of the whales to within a few centimeters.

"We can't put a gray whale on a scale, but we can use aerial images to analyze their body condition--basically, how fat or skinny they are," Durban said.

More:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-05/nnmf-suu052815.php