Parley SnotBot Expedition #7

Dear Friends,

Parley SnotBot Expedition #7, the first for 2018, is now underway. Our enthusiasm remains high as we are returning to two of our favorite locations: San Ignacio Lagoon and Loreto. We have a slightly expanded team, expanded mission goals, and two new drones to test.

Our first location and mission will be on the Pacific side of the Baja peninsula, at San Ignacio Lagoon. Here we will be counting gray whales from the air using our FlightWave Edge vertical take-off and landing fixed-wing drone. Dr. Steven Swartz has been doing abundance surveys from small boats here for over 30 years, and as many of you know we have been conducting aerial surveys of the Southern right whales in Argentina for over 46 years.  Along with the SnotBot themes of easier, cheaper, safer, and field-friendly we are exploring the use of fixed-wing UAS for these surveys/population counts. We do not plan on doing a full lagoon survey this year, but we will deploy our FlightWave Edge and test different flight patterns, different cameras/camera angles and different speeds.  Our goal is to cover part of Dr. Swartz’s survey line (from the air) to see how the UAS whale counts compare with his vessel-based counts.  We are very lucky to have Dan Levy from FlightWave with us this year to help us put the Edge thought its paces. We will be writing a full blog on the Edge and our results but it is an exciting machine!

The second location will be a more familiar Parley SnotBot expedition with blue whales off Loreto. Our goals for this expedition are:

•+40 blow samples – volume, volume, volume!!

•Validate all deployment, storage and collection protocols.

•Test different configurations & size of petri dishes with the goal of more robust samples.

•Conduct day long focal follows of one animal, collecting multiple blows over the day along with opportunistic feces collection.

•Compare snot collection from 3 different aerial platforms. Inspire 2, Mavic Pro, Matrice 210 (thank You FLIR)!

•Fly for visual data streams – photo-ID & volumetrics work (build on our Intel database and protocols) – also spot for Faeces.

•Sample other species opportunistically: fin whales, sperm whales, orca?

•Ensure full video data feeds and corresponding meta & live data is collected (i.e. wet or dry blows).

•Take the body temperature of a whale by looking down its blowhole with a FLIR Zenmuse XT camera – another first we believe for the Parley SnotBot program.

We are very grateful to FLIR for donating a Matrice 210 and a Zenmuse XT thermal camera to this expedition. The ruggedized nature of the DJI Matrice 210 seems well suited to this work and adding the Radiometric FLIR capacity to our drone sensor package is a very exciting addition. To the best of my knowledge no one has ever taken the body temperature of free ranging whales before (certainly not from a drone) so as we continue to develop the Airborne Whale Health assessment package that is Parley SnotBot – a big thank you goes out to FLIR for giving us this capacity. Hopefully there will be a full FLIR blog reporting on our success later on during this expedition. I have attached a photo of the FLIR Matrice 210, note that we added the camouflage paint job.

This year’s team is:

Iain Kerr – Expedition leader, primary pilot

Andy Rogan – Science manager,  pilot

Christian Miller – Videographer and cameraman extraordinaire, pilot

Bryn Keller, INTEL – Visual data streams, pilot

Dan Levy, FlightWave – pilot.

One of the many goals of the Parley SnotBot program is to develop systems and protocols to facilitate the best use of these tools by others: with us now embarking on our 7th expedition you might have thought that we would have everything pretty much sorted out by now – that is not the case – we are always learning more and working to improve our protocols.  First of all, we are testing new drones: this year thanks to the generosity of the FLIR corporation we are taking one of the most advanced industrial drones on the market down to the Sea of Cortez, the Matrice 210.  The Matrice line of drones are built for industrial / commercial use (not recreation purposes), they are more flexible (can carry multiple payloads either simultaneously or independently), and they are ruggedized, including being water resistant.

We are taking our old faithful drone the Inspire 2 and we will have the Mavic Pro to work with orca, should we be lucky enough to find them. We are trying new petri dishes, they are square (no not old fashioned like me but square) – we even have teflon liners for some of our dishes (hormones tend to stick to plastic).

Christian, Andy and I had a total of eight checked bags and six carry-ons – so only 14 bags this year (photo). Bryn has two checked and two carry-ons (including and Inspire 2) and Dan checked in two FightWave Edge drones and had two carry ons.  Right now, I am not sure how five guys and a total of 22 bags are going to get into our rented minivan – but we will keep you posted.

For the first three days in San Ignacio Lagoon we will be staying in tents and will not have internet or phone access, but once are back in Loreto, expect to hear more from the Parley SnotBot team!  I have attached a couple of Christian Miller’s extraordinary photos from 2017 to hold you over until we have more to report on from the field.

Last but not least, our work is going to be covered by VICE News (HBO), which  will be joining us in Loreto for three  days along with our good friend Christina Caputo from Parley.

Big thanks go to Parley, Intel and all of you for supporting this work. 2017 was a truly remarkable year for the Parley SnotBot, tand we hope for an even more successful year this year.

From the Sea of Cortez, we wish you fair winds (coincidentally that is what we want, along with lots of whales!!).

Onwards Upwards.

Iain