Snotbot’ creators develop latest use for drones in whale research
By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill
Ocean Alliance, the scientific research and conservation group that pioneered using UAVs within the study of whales with its breakthrough “Snotbot” technology, is finding a brand new solution to use drones to learn concerning the underwater lives of those magnificent marine animals.
Since 2022, the Gloucester, Massachusetts-based non-profit organization has been using business DJI drones to tag whales with data-collecting sensors, which permit scientists to review the whales’ movements and behavior. Using UAVs to deliver the tags replaces older tagging methods, involving chasing the big mammals in boats and using long poles to connect the tags to the whale’s skin.
Andy Rogan, Ocean Alliance’s science manager, said the pole-tagging method has proved to be invasive for the whales and dangerous for the humans involved. “At any time when you’ve got a small boat next to an animal that size, it’s potentially dangerous,” he said.
“The issue with tags was that they were difficult to deploy,” Rogan said. “You needed to get right up near the whale and essentially the tag was fixed loosely to the tip of this long pole after which using the pole, you’d almost dunk the tag onto the whale and the whales didn’t prefer it.”
So, the Ocean Alliance team began experimenting with using UAVs to deliver the tags. The organization had already gained an awesome deal off expertise in using drones in its study of whales through its Snotbot program, by which it might fly a drone through the spray shot out of the whale’s blow hole, collecting biological samples.
“Inside that sample — snot as such — there may be all of this biological information, there’s genetic information, which is hugely vital for understanding and managing whale populations,” Rogan said.
Based on the success of the Snotbot program, Ocean Alliance began taking a look at other potential applications for drone technology within the study of marine mammals. The result has been the drone tagging program, which since has develop into its principal focus.
Sensor-equipped tags have been used as a non-invasive solution to study whale biology for a few quarter century. “Essentially these tags are almost like a Fitbit or a sensible look ahead to a whale, and so they allow us for the primary time to know what whales are doing once they’re underwater,” Rogan said.
“These tags just opened up a complete latest world of whale science. They supply a extremely broad scope of knowledge: on feeding ecology, on biokinetics, on acoustics, social communication, feeding, all of this really vital stuff.”
Ocean Alliance went to work to determine a drone-based tagging program in late 2021. Figuring out of a rented warehouse north of Boston, the team developed the techniques it might use to position the drone above a whale that had come to the surface, and to drop the suction cup-equipped tags onto the whale’s skin. By February 2022, the team was able to test its techniques in the sphere.
“We first actually deployed tags in February 2022 on blue whales and fin whales within the Gulf of California in Mexico,” Rogan said. “You possibly can do all of the testing you would like in a lab setting and a controlled setting, but it surely’s very different once you’re on the market on the ocean with whales. Our hope was to deploy 10 tags on whales through the expedition, which we thought was quite an ambitious goal. And we ended up getting 21 on. So, it was a hugely successful expedition ultimately.”
Although Ocean Alliance had previously worked in collaboration with Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts, to custom-design drones for its work, the group currently relies on commercially produced drones, chiefly DJI models.
“Our workhorse is the DJI Encourage 2. But we also now have used among the Matrice drones, and so we’ve the M210,” Rogan said. Using 3D-printed materials the researchers have engineered a propriety system for deploying the tags, which may be installed on the business drones.
The unit is capable of carry and deploy a so-called D tag, or a knowledge tag, the principal sort of tag utilized by whale scientists around the globe. Small and light-weight, the tag uses suction cups to connect to the whale’s skin. The tag adheres to the whale, collecting data, for about 24 hours, before it detaches and floats to the surface where it emits a radio signal, which allows it to be positioned and retrieved by the scientists.
Within the initial experiments the tags would wobble an excessive amount of after being dropped to permit the tags to properly attach, particularly in the event that they were being deployed by a drone from an altitude of about 20 feet. So, the team designed and 3D-printed a dropper, just like a lawn dart, which stabilizes the vertical fall, allowing the tag to be in the right position to stick to the whale.
When deploying heavier camera-equipped tags, often called CATS [Customized Animal Tracking Solutions] tags, the drone pilot allows the UAV to descend to a lower height, about 10 feet above the animal, so the falling tag doesn’t have enough time to shift on its orientation.
Rogan said deploying the tags in this fashion is way less bothersome to the whales then the old pole-tagging method. “It’s definitely really vital for us to observe the behavior of the whales and the way our activities are impacting the whales,” Rogan said. “Sometimes the whale will dive after we drop the tag on it and swim away. Sometimes they roll on their side to look up. I’d say for essentially the most part, possibly 70 to 80 percent of the time, we see no response and the whale doesn’t respond in any way that we are able to discern.”
Nonetheless, these reactions are fairly mild, compared with those exhibited by animals tagged by the pole method, he said. “The boat could be very loud … and potentially that acoustic disturbance is the principal stressor on the whale. And also you’re almost acting like a predator, right? You’re getting really near that whale with a ship, chasing it down and the animals didn’t prefer it. So, they often exhibited quite strong reactions to the tagging procedure from the bow.”
Since developing the drone tagging system, Ocean Alliance’s services have been in high demand amongst other conservation groups and governmental agencies, wanting to learn methods to adopt the technology for their very own uses.
“For the time being, we’re actually focusing less on our own research programs and really just collaborating loads with different researchers around the globe, particularly when there’s an infinite demand and wish for this data,” Rogan said. Last yr, the organization worked with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on a program to deploy tags on North Atlantic right whales, some of the endangered whales on the planet.
Although the drone tagging program is in its infancy, the organization has already traveled around the globe on research and tagging expeditions. Last yr, the group returned to Mexico, where it conducted its first drone tagging field testing experiments. More recently, in December, the Ocean Alliance team traveled to the Middle East to deploy tags on a critically endangered population of Arabian Sea humpback whales off the coast of Oman. Plans this yr call for tagging expeditions in waters off the coasts of Hawaii, Canada and Latest England, near the organization’s home base.
Rogan said the drone tagging program has been instrumental in helping Ocean Alliance to attain its ultimate goal of preserving whale species for future generations. “It’s not only a science and research tool, but it surely’s excellent for conservation as well. It’s helping us higher understand these whales in ways in which helps us to raised protect them,” he said.
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