Drones for MarineScience

By: Lucian Anderson, UHM MOP Alumnus

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones have seen tremendous growth as an industry since 2010. Technology that had once been used primarily in military operations is now available to the public to use for recreation. The Federal Aviation Agency allows users to obtain a license to operate UAVs for research and commercial purposes. Given its growth over the decade, it's no surprise that UAVs have been finding transdisciplinary purposes in other fields such as biology, construction, 3D modeling, medicine transport, and marine science. UAVs have given us a new perspective in marine science Something that used to require a crew, boats, and equipment, now can be done from the beach or off the side of the road near the beach to not disturb people.

In Australia, UAVs are being adopted in many aspects. On the sandy, sunny beaches of Australia it was common to see helicopters flying above beach-goers trying to enjoy their leisure. The purpose of the helicopter patrol is to spot sharks, identify them, and to mitigate shark attacks on swimmers.

Surveys found the Australian public prefer the usage of UAVs over a helicopter flying overhead. Dr. Vincent Raoult, a postdoctoral researcher at Macquarie and Deakin Universities, hopes using UAVs to spot sharks near people will decrease human-shark interactions. An added benefit is the drones are very useful at finding swimmers in distress. More and more agencies in Australia are adopting UAVs for beach patrols because of these benefits and public opinion.

Melissa Marquez, a PhD student at Curtin University in Australia, is using UAVs for wildlife monitoring for her research, observing shark behaviors in a remote lagoon in Western Australia. ?UAVs can make observations throughout the day, just replace the battery and send them off again. It is that easy.?Dr. Vincent Raoult adds that, ?drones in general have very little effect on animal behavior. This means we can observe natural behaviors that were previously difficult to see because they would require finding the interaction in question and then boating/swimming/diving to the area to observe it, which involves a lot of noise and big things in the water.?

Further south, Ukrainians in Antarctica are using drones to do whale/boat interaction monitoring. The whale?s interactions are observed by UAVs with laser equipment attached. Whale size can be determined more accurately from a UAVperspective than from a boat. Scientists then can determine the whale?s age and attributes such as how much fat the whale has. Scientists have also been using UAVs to observe maternal whale behavior without the disturbance of a manned boat crew coming near them. This is safer for the whales and the researchers.

Within the UAVfamily are Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV). They are boats that can be operated without a crew onboard. USVs are used in the tropical regions for hurricane warnings.

NOAA is responsible for the conservation and management of marine species within the United States, including Alaska?s large populations of pollock When the COVID-19 outbreak happened, USVs were adopted to collect data without putting crews at risk. They found that surveys could be conducted 40%faster using USVs, so the agency has been quick to adopt them to collect data to make management decisions regarding fishing in Alaska. So far, they have found that pollock is a stable species and not threatened by overfishing.

UAVs and other drones have had a profound impact on many aspects of society and science. Soon it may become an everyday occurrence with drone deliveries.

Drones have opened doors for researchers to observe wildlife with less disturbance. There are limitations to drones such as some species like seagulls respond negatively to UAVs and battery life can be a constraint. Another issue is sometimes drones can't properly observe depending on the conditions of the water that day, such as rough or choppy waves. While the technology still has some improvements needed, using drones has so far been giving us data that we would not have seen decades ago.