Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for Surveying Marine Fauna: A Dugong Case Study

Hodgson, Amanda; Kelly, Natalie; Peel, David

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0079556

Cited by 311 publications

(311 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…The advantages of fixed-wing aircraft versus VTOLs depend upon individual ecological applications (Koh and Wich 2012;Sardà-Palomera et al 2012;Hodgson et al 2013). However, for wildlife census applications where portability, limited takeoff and landing distances, flight stability, hovering capability, and quiet operation around easily disturbed wildlife are important, the VTOL described and used in this study is exceptional.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Based on the above criteria, we eliminated all of the small UAS that were powered by internal combustion engines (ICE) and all of the fixed-wing platforms. These groups were eliminated because of launch and recovery constraints of fixed-wing aircraft, noise levels associated with gasoline engines compared with electric motors, and the challenges faced by small fixed-wing aircraft in maneuvering over and collecting high-resolution images of small targets in moderate winds (Watts et al 2012;Hodgson et al 2013). The category of platforms that seemed to meet all of our criteria was the small multi-rotor, battery-powered VTOL aircraft group.…”

Section: Uas Platform Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A small unmanned aerial system for estimating abundance and size of Antarctic predators

et al. 2015

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Quantifying the distribution and abundance of predators is integral to many ecological studies, but can be difficult in remote settings such as Antarctica. Recent advances in the development of unmanned aerial systems (UAS), particularly vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft, have provided a new tool for studying the distribution and abundance of predator populations. We detail our experience and testing in selecting a VTOL platform for use in remote, windy, perennially overcast settings, where acquiring cloud-free high-resolution satellite images is often impractical. We present results from the first use of VTOLs for estimating abundance, colony area, and density of krilldependent predators in Antarctica, based upon 65 missions flown in 2010/2011 (n = 28) and 2012/2013 (n = 37). We address concerns over UAS sound affecting wildlife by comparing VTOL-generated noise to ambient and penguingenerated sound. We also report on the utility of VTOLs for missions other than abundance and distribution, namely to estimate size of individual leopard seals. Several characteristics of small, battery-powered VTOLs make them particularly useful in wildlife applications: (1) portability, (2) stability in flight, (3) limited launch area requirements, (4) safety, and (5) limited sound when compared to fixed-wing and internal combustion engine aircraft. We conclude that of the numerous UAS available, electric VTOLs are among the most promising for ecological applications.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Uas Platform Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A small unmanned aerial system for estimating abundance and size of Antarctic predators

et al. 2015

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“…In the marine environment, UAVs are revolutionizing the way marine species can be studied due to their small size, apparent minimal disturbance of wildlife and improved safety for both operators and animals (Nowacek et al, 2016;Fiori et al, 2017). UAVs have been utilized for a wide variety of applications including aerial surveys, monitoring, habitat use, abundance estimates, photogrammetry and biological sampling e.g., whale "blow" (Hogg et al, 2009;Acevedo-Whitehouse et al, 2010;Hodgson et al, 2013;Durban et al, 2015;Pomeroy et al, 2016;Schofield et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Economical Custom-Built Drone for Assessing Whale Health

Pirotta

Smith²,

Ostrowski

et al. 2017

Front. Mar. Sci.

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Drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have huge potential to improve the safety and efficiency of sample collection from wild animals under logistically challenging circumstances. Here we present a method for surveying population health that uses UAVs to sample respiratory vapor, 'whale blow,' exhaled by free-swimming humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), and coupled this with amplification and sequencing of respiratory tract microbiota. We developed a low-cost multirotor UAV incorporating a sterile petri dish with a remotely operated 'blow' to sample whale blow with minimal disturbance to the whales. This design addressed several sampling challenges: accessibility; safety; cost, and critically, minimized the collection of atmospheric and seawater microbiota and other potential sources of sample contamination. We collected 59 samples of blow from northward migrating humpback whales off Sydney, Australia and used high throughput sequencing of bacterial ribosomal gene markers to identify putative respiratory tract microbiota. Model-based comparisons with seawater and dronecaptured air demonstrated that our system minimized external sources of contamination and successfully captured sufficient material to identify whale blow-specific microbial taxa. Whale-specific taxa included species and genera previously associated with the respiratory tracts or oral cavities of mammals (e.g., Pseudomonas, Clostridia, Cardiobacterium), as well as species previously isolated from dolphin or killer whale blowholes (Corynebacteria, others). Many examples of exogenous marine species were identified, including Tenacibaculum and Psychrobacter spp. that have been associated with the skin microbiota of marine mammals and fish and may include pathogens. This information provides a baseline of respiratory tract microbiota profiles of contemporary whale health. Customized UAVs are a promising new tool for marine megafauna research and may have broad application in cost-effective monitoring and management of whale populations worldwide.

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“…Drones are currently already employed for conservation [20] for terrain mapping and classification of forest types [18,16,21,35,14]. These are examples of uses where no real time data analysis is needed [5].…”

Section: Drones For Nature Conservationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…orang-utan nests, chimpanzee nests, turtle tracks), but also threats to animals (e.g. signs of human activity [16,21,26,35]). See Figure 1 for some examples of conservation images taken from a drone.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nature Conservation Drones for Automatic Localization and Counting of Animals

Gemert

Verschoor²,

Mettes

et al. 2015

Computer Vision - ECCV 2014 Workshops

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General rightsIt is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. Abstract. This paper is concerned with nature conservation by automatically monitoring animal distribution and animal abundance. Typically, such conservation tasks are performed manually on foot or after an aerial recording from a manned aircraft. Such manual approaches are expensive, slow and labor intensive. In this paper, we investigate the combination of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs or "drones") with automatic object recognition techniques as a viable solution to manual animal surveying. Since no controlled data is available, we record our own animal conservation dataset with a quadcopter drone. We evaluate two nature conservation tasks: i) animal detection ii) animal counting using three state-of-the-art generic object recognition methods that are particularly well-suited for on-board detection. Results show that object detection techniques for human-scale photographs do not directly translate to a drone perspective, but that light-weight automatic object detection techniques are promising for nature conservation tasks.

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Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for Surveying Marine Fauna: A Dugong Case Study

Cited by 311 publications

References 42 publications

A small unmanned aerial system for estimating abundance and size of Antarctic predators

A small unmanned aerial system for estimating abundance and size of Antarctic predators

An Economical Custom-Built Drone for Assessing Whale Health

Nature Conservation Drones for Automatic Localization and Counting of Animals

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