Keeping watch on oceans using off-the-shelf technology
To count how many seabirds lived in a colony, David Johnston and his team at Duke University used to walk among the black-browed albatrosses and southern rockhopper penguins with a clicker, like bouncers at a bar. When one small section was finished, that number would be extrapolated across the total area.
If the colony on the Falklands Islands was in a spot too difficult for humans to easily access, planes would be sent up for aerial photography that would be painstakingly examined on a computer display – counting the tens of thousands of birds, one by one. “Trying to sit there counting those damn birds on the screen, you just go crazy,” said Johnston, an associate professor of marine conservation at Duke. Nor was it accurate. “If we were both asked to count all the albatross, we’d probably come up with different numbers.”
If wasting the talents of marine biologists by methodically, boringly and inaccurately counting birds on a screen makes you think that there has to be a better way, you’re right. Thanks to the arrival of drones for data collection and artificial intelligence for analysis, much of this work can be automated, making it easier for scientists to keep a careful watch on our oceans.
Alongside Johnston’s seabirds, researchers at the University of Exeter have used overhead drones to
