Thursday, October 5, 2017

How Drone Technology Is Helping Scientific Wildlife Research In The Arctic

Another partnership is the Snotbot

Project in collaboration with Parley for the Oceans and the Ocean Alliance to advance whale research that will help researchers better understand ocean health and broader impacts of climate change.
The “Snotbot” collects the blow, or snot, exhaled from whales as they surface to breathe, which is rich with biological data, including DNA, stress and pregnancy hormones, viruses, bacteria and toxins.  Collected samples are sent to researchers on ships at a safe distance from the whales, then the data is sent to machines running Intel Xeon and Movidius technology with machine learning algorithms that help identify a particular whale through pattern-recognition, and assess its health in real-time using techniques such as volumetric measurement.