Flying With Whales: Drones Are Remaking Marine Mammal Research
November 20th, 2025
Via Knowable Magazine, a look at how – from collecting whale snot to capturing surprising behaviors – aerial drones are giving scientists a new view of life at sea: In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, causing one of the largest marine oil spills ever. In the aftermath […]
Read More »Using Technology To Stop Asia’s Deadly Elephant Wars
October 11th, 2025
Via Nikkei Asia, a look at how technology such as thermal drones, AI, and acoustic sensors are being used to stop the conflict between elephants and their deadliest enemy: man Thermal drones are launched. Artificial intelligence and acoustic sensors are activated to pinpoint targets. Armed rangers are sent out on patrols. Such innovations have found […]
Read More »How Scientists Are Using Drones to Study Sperm Whales
August 19th, 2025
Courtesy of the New York Times, an article on a new tagging method called tap-and-go allows researchers to gather more data on the health and behavior of whales, with less disruption: A drone view of a tap-and-go encounter with a sperm whale at the sea surface. The technique gently affixes a suction-cup sensor to the […]
Read More »In Brazil, Tech Is A New Frontier In Battles Over Indigenous Lands
July 25th, 2024
Via Dialogue Earth, a look at how – as illegal miners seek to profit from the Amazon, and NGOs to protect it – high-speed internet, AI and even Flight Simulator are emerging as tools for good and bad: A dirt runway near an illegal mining site in the Yanomami Indigenous territory, Roraima state, Brazil. In […]
Read More »USVs Could Deter IUU Fishing
August 29th, 2023
Via the US Naval Institute, a report on how unmanned saildrones deployed primarily for maritime security at present, can support conservation efforts:
In the opening scenes of Top Gun: Maverick, Admiral Chester Cain tells Maverick, “These planes you’ve been testing, Captain, one day, sooner than later, they won’t need pilots at all . . . the future is coming, and you’re not in it.” The Coast Guard faces a similar reckoning. Autonomous technology is an attractive solution to many maritime security challenges. Autonomous oceangoing vessels, for example, could be a critical force multiplier in combating illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. As the Coast Guard continues to increase its support of a free and open Indo-Pacific, it must expedite the deployment of autonomous technology to build its capacity to monitor, detect, and deter IUU fishing.
USVs as Deterrence
The presence of Coast Guard assets deters illegal fishing to some extent. This likely would be the case whether the asset were a cutter or an autonomous USV patrolling the high seas. If bad actors know a Coast Guard asset is in the area, they are more likely to check their practices and location before setting fishing lines.When a Coast Guard vessel is unavailable or unable to operate in a region for an extended period, autonomous USVs could be used to observe, detect, and deter IUU. In addition, the data collected by the USVs could support global transparency efforts and supply allies with critical information within the maritime domain. Following President Joe Biden’s recent announcement expanding the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, USVs could be used to provide presence in waters that are far from any support or persistent presence from a Coast Guard asset.
Commercially Available
USVs already have proved to be a viable tool for maritime domain awareness. The Coast Guard conducted a 30-day proof-of-concept in 2020, testing three different autonomous uncrewed surface vehicles. Yet, three years later, these “low-cost maritime domain awareness” solutions have yet to see active use by the Coast Guard. As the pilot study report noted, USVs could be a useful in identifying fishing vessel activity and supporting search and rescue. Further, reports from USVs could allow the Coast Guard to adaptively deploy cutter assets to areas of concentrated fishing effort.USVs are already supporting maritime domain awareness in other regions. The Saildrone has undertaken both maritime security and scientific missions. For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tasked three Saildrones to sail more than 6,000 nautical miles collecting fisheries data, which in turn supported the Alaska Pollock Stock Assessment. In another 2021 partnership with NOAA, five Saildrones sailed into the eye of a hurricane. The U.S. Fifth Fleet has deployed Saildrones across the Arabian Gulf and has a goal of deploying 100 more by the end of summer 2023. In addition, the Fourth Fleet is preparing to deploy USVs to counter transnational criminal organizations and Chinese IUU fishing in both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans off Central and South America.
NOAA and the Navy have integrated and successfully deployed Saildrone at scale, further demonstrating the applicability and utility of the technology. A USV program could be implemented immediately using the infrastructure and standard operating procedures established by Fifth Fleet. As Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Linda Fagan stated, “Tomorrow looks different. So will we. We will be a more adaptive and connected Coast Guard that generates sustained readiness, resilience, and capability—in new ways—to enhance our Nation’s maritime safety, security, and prosperity.” The Coast Guard must be innovative and able to adapt to the changing maritime landscape. Building capacity by deploying advanced technology in a public-private partnership would greatly advance the service, inspire its workforce, and change the game in maritime security.
Lack of Resources
The growing demand for assets in the Indo-Pacific has exacerbated the Coast Guard’s workforce shortage. The Indo-Pacific region covers more than 65 percent of the global maritime waters and 56 percent of the global ocean capture fisheries. With thousands of fishing and shipping vessels roaming the high seas, the Coast Guard requires additional support and ways to increase its presence. With current resource allocations, the service has little chance of covering this area of responsibility effectively to protect biodiversity and curb illegal fishing.Autonomous USVs could help fill the void. Autonomous seagoing USVs require less manning, less support, and can provide the necessary presence to deter illicit activity, offering a solution to the current and future manpower challenge.
The Human Element
While autonomous USVs are useful, they cannot replace a human in every situation. Manned ships and crews still will be needed to represent the United States, the Coast Guard, and democracy. A USV cannot provide the same relationship. However, this should not be seen as a shortfall, but rather a capability that must be strengthened. A USV can augment the mission and serve as a force multiplier. Imagine instead of sending one fast response cutter (FRC) 2,000 miles by itself, the Coast Guard sent an FRC and four Saildrones, which were able to expand and increase the coverage and presence in the region.The Gray Area of Regulatory Framework
Another challenge is the recognition of and regulatory framework for autonomous vehicles on the high seas. Consider the seizures of USVs by Iran in 2022 in the Red Sea and China in 2016 in the South China Sea. Following the 2016 incident, the Pentagon responded: “It is ours. It is clearly marked; we’d like to have it back and [would] like this to never happen again.” But the legal framework is not clear on what authorities a USV is granted.Questions for the future include how to treat these situations and what policy framework is needed. If a Chinese distant-water fishing vessel in the Indo-Pacific rams and sinks a Coast Guard USV, what legal repercussions should be pursued? The contingencies and legal response will need to be clear, concise, and well thought out, but this should not deter the Coast Guard from moving forward. Questions of USV management are already being addressed in the private and public sector on land, and these policies will help inform policies for the maritime environment. However, challenges will remain inside national jurisdictions and on the high seas. A similar challenge will play out in space in the coming years in terms of jurisdiction, responsibility, and legal authorities.
Looking Forward
There is no foreseeable future in which the Coast Guard would be better off without autonomous vehicles to support its Indo-Pacific strategy. As Admiral Thomas H. Collins stated in his 2004 essay, “Change and Continuity—The U.S. Coast Guard Today”: “Adapting to change is one of the most difficult tasks we face as individuals or as an organization, but with change comes new opportunities. We must inspire a culture of innovation . . . in all mission areas so as to enhance productivity and reduce workload—all the while driving towards quality outcomes.” Adopting this technology is not a question of when, but how fast.While USVs are not a panacea for all maritime security problems, they could increase the Coast Guard’s presence and deter illegal fishing. Getting eyes on the water could bring new opportunities for the service to better respond to the changing threats within the Indo-Pacific area of responsibility.
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Read More »Scientist Uses Drones and Algorithms To Save Whales — And The Rest Of The Ocean
October 28th, 2022
Via The Washington Post, an article on a scientist who uses drones and algorithms to save whales — and the rest of the ocean:
Just yards from the Fish 1, a 22-foot research vessel, a humpback whale about twice the size of the boat hurled itself out of the water, sending shimmering droplets in a broken necklace of splash.
In the other direction, a hulking cargo ship, stacked high with containers, crept closer.
Aboard the Fish 1, a slight figure whose face is crinkled from years in the sun and saltwater, looked from one to the other. Ocean scientist Douglas McCauley wanted to see whether the near real-time detection system he and his colleagues had developed, Whale Safe, could avert collisions between whales and ships in the Santa Barbara Channel.
The tool represents one of the ways McCauley, who heads the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory at the University of California Santa Barbara, is working to protect the ocean even as it becomes more industrialized. By collecting data from several sources — an acoustic monitoring buoy that listens for whale songs, identifies them according to species with an algorithm and sends that information to satellites; a predictive habitat model for blue whales; and sightings logged in an app — Whale Safe forecasts to ships the chances of meeting a whale. Then, it grades shipping companies on whether they actually slow down to 10 knots or less during whale migrations, from May 1 to Dec. 15.
“We can literally watch all of the ships in California and across the whole ocean; we are better positioned than ever before to try to track damage as it occurs, or before it occurs,” McCauley said a few days later in a Zoom call from the French Polynesian island of Moorea, where he is spending a month researching coral reefs. “We are in trouble if we don’t do something different, and I realized that if I kept sticking my head literally underwater or stayed in the lab, these problems weren’t going to fix themselves.”
Humans have worked in the seas for centuries: fishing, seafaring and more recently, drilling for oil and gas and the development of offshore wind farms. Shipping lanes cross almost every surface of the sea, except for shrinking swaths of the Southern and Arctic Ocean.
But as development has intensified and the planet has warmed, the 43-year-old McCauley has ventured into the gray area between scientific research and advocacy to try to fix these problems — or at least make them visible.
He is trying to save the whales; collect plastic; explore the links between climate change, overfishing and nutrition in the South Pacific; warn about the dangers of seabed mining; track sharks using drones and artificial intelligence; and calculate the benefits to people, animals and the planet that come from protecting broad swaths of the sea.
“One of Doug’s compelling traits as a scientist is that he is keen to explore outside the box,” said Benjamin Halpern, a UCSB professor of marine biology and ocean conservation who has worked with McCauley for about a decade. “He is a very creative thinker, and able to think differently about the solutions to problems and what kinds of research and science can help inform those.”
[These whales are on the brink. Now comes climate change — and wind power]
In meetings with corporate executives and political leaders, McCauley has made a consistent argument: Protecting the sea is in our interest, since it already does a lot of the work for us.
In 2020 McCauley led a report that provided a framework for marine protected areas on the high seas, finding that such refuges could be powerful tools for biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration and climate resilience. Even port and fishing communities, he argued, depend on an ocean that is still wild and alive.
“We have a globally unique chance to talk about this before it’s too late,” he said.
The encounter in late September, amid one of the world’s busiest shipping channels and a vibrant ecosystem, offered a glimpse of how to do just that. Minutes after the container ship had passed McCauley’s boat, the whale — possibly the same one, but it is hard to tell — had found another, and the two sent up exhales of spray.
It was as if a bulldozer operator had plowed through a herd of elephants without stopping, not too far from a major city’s downtown, hoping to avoid a crash. And it happens many times a day here in the Santa Barbara Channel, even though barely anyone sees it.
While McCauley tracks these interactions, much of the public seems to have noticed this industrial shift underwater.
Since 2000, global container port traffic has nearly quadrupled; aquaculture produces more than half of the fish we eat; about 8 million metric tons of plastic enter the oceans every year; over half the global oceans are fished; more than 700,000 miles of undersea data cables snake across the ocean floor; seabed mining may soon begin in some of the world’s last pristine ecosystems; and the fishing industry is beginning to target deep ocean life.
The ocean is, by far, the world’s largest carbon sink, having absorbed about 40 percent of the excess greenhouse gasses from burning fossil fuels. But it comes at a cost: more acidic and warmer waters, which may not soak up as much carbon going forward. The fact that ocean animals evolved to a narrow range of conditions, McCauley and others found, makes them more vulnerable to climate change.
The landscape was less crowded when McCauley grew up in Lomita, Calif., and went to school in San Pedro, not far from the ports and the channel. He could see whale migrations out the window of his high school geometry class. From an early age, he would ride his bike to the beach as an escape, and “all of a sudden, I was in a super wild place.”
He spent much of his adolescence and early adulthood working at the local public aquarium, and working on fishing boats.
It was there, catching squid at 1 a.m. to sell as bait, hauling in a croaker bigger than he was, and watching people spend $20 a day to go out a boat to catch dinner for their families, that he saw how a thriving ocean economy works.
It was later, in his career as a scientist, that he had data to explain what he learned through experience: What is good for the ocean is also good for people, and possibly business too. Slowing down ships means fewer ship strikes, which means more whales. That is good for biodiversity and climate change: Whales themselves are carbon sinks and fertilize plant growth (another carbon sink). It also means cleaner air for those who live nearby, and fewer carbon emissions from fossil fuels.
He and others developed WhaleSafe, he said, after shipping companies asked: “These are the biggest mammals on the planet. Can’t you tell us when they’re there so we don’t run into them?”
Three shipping companies contacted for this article, as well as an industry association, said that they supported such programs. CMA CGM, among the world’s largest shipping container companies, is sending alerts above medium directly to their captains, and Hyundai Heavy Industries is working with Whale Safe to incorporate its data directly onboard new ships.
But some of the firms tracked by the tool, which has recently expanded its use to include San Francisco, have received F grades. Matson Navigation, for example, only slowed down roughly 18 percent of the time.
Lee Kindberg, the head of environment and sustainability for Maersk, which received a B for slowing down in about 79 percent of cases, said the company supports Whale Safe. But she added that shippers must balance safety and speed restrictions against weather and demands from companies — and their customers — who want everything faster.
And, as climate change scrambles whales’ migration patterns and schedules, tools like Whale Safe may become even more essential in protecting them, McCauley said.
Trying to prevent ship strikes, one of the leading causes of whale deaths, is becoming an emergency. Three of the past four years rank as the deadliest on record for whales on the West Coast — about 80 annually — but the death toll is probably much higher, since most sink to the ocean floor. There have been no known ship strikes in the Santa Barbara Channel since the launch of Whale Safe in 2020, though it is too early to make a causal link.
A moored acoustic monitoring buoy near the Channel Islands in California. Santa Cruz Island is in the distance.
While aboard the Fish 1, McCauley pulled on a wet suit, flippers and a mask and jumped into the water to inspect the buoy. Looking not unlike one of the sea lions who popped up nearby with his slick outer layer and whiskers poking out beneath his mask, he scrubbed it for barnacles, and made sure all of the hardware was in good condition.Like the buoys, McCauley seems to be able to take in information, translate it into languages its recipients understand and make it actionable, according to Jane Lubchenco, a marine ecologist who has worked with McCauley and now serves as deputy director for climate and environment at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
“He is adept at boiling something down to the most important components and expressing his knowledge in an accessible fashion, and he is passionate about solutions,” she said in an email.
“Doug does seem quite nimble and effective at engaging with the private sector, and I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing,” Halpern said. “Maybe it’s valuable that someone is testing those waters, because we can’t solve the climate change catastrophe we face without engaging the private sector and corporations.”
McCauley spreads his message with a billionaire’s help. Salesforce co-founder Marc Benioff and his wife Lynne decided to fund an ocean science lab after reading a landmark study he co-authored on the ocean’s industrialization. McCauley serves as the lab’s director, and the university has received $88 million from the Benioffs since 2016.
Since then, their conversations about the ocean and “carbon math” have shaped much of Benioff’s climate and environmental philanthropy, including the “Trillion Trees” tree-planting initiative. “By aligning with Doug on the ocean, we found a bigger vision on the climate,” Benioff said in a Zoom interview.
McCauley said he is aware that some might question engaging with private philanthropists and industry, but argued that he and others could not afford to wait for federal funding — and action. “We don’t have the luxury of time.”
The boat approaches the buoy. McCauley prepares to check and clean the buoy. McCauley steadies himself as he works on the buoy.
Over the past few years, McCauley has tried to make that decision-enabling data available and legible to policymakers across the globe.Alongside a group of other scientists, McCauley has worked in Kiribati to document how damage to coral reefs from climate change and overfishing harms the diet and health of country’s inhabitants, who depend on fish for essential nutrients. The researchers share that data with government officials to show which islands are most at risk.
McCauley is also tackling the issue of deep seabed mining, which could begin in international waters as soon as next year. McCauley and the Benioff Ocean Science Lab have tried to map potential excavation sites across the globe, since the public remains largely unaware of this development, its scope and its possible threats.
[How protecting the ocean can save species and fight climate change]
At the bottom of the ocean around the world lie significant deposits of metals, including some needed for electric vehicle batteries and other clean energy projects. Some companies see ocean deposits as key to this clean energy transition, and are jockeying for primacy in this prospective new industry.
Along with more than 400 other scientists, McCauley signed a statement last year arguing that deep-sea mining will result in “loss of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning that would be irreversible on multigenerational time scales.” They argued that there are still too many unknowns in the deep ocean to mine them responsibly.
McCauley helped bring together leaders from environmental nonprofits and businesses to discuss the risks of seabed mining. Afterward, other advocates successfully worked to pressure Google, BMW, Volvo, Samsung and others to support a moratorium.
But industry officials such as the Metals Company CEO Gerard Barron counter that deep-sea mining opponents are ignoring the trade-offs that come from keeping the ocean off limits.
“While saying ‘No’ to something is easy,” said Barron, who heads a seabed mining corporation, “finding a solution is hard and if we fail to consider all our options, we will consign our biodiverse rainforests and carbon sinks to further destruction, increase our emissions load, and further damage the oceans Douglas has set out to protect.”
McCauley, by contrast, sees these planetary puzzle pieces as interlocked. Stopping seabed mining might mean less ocean noise, which might mean more whales, which means more stored carbon, which might mean fewer forest fires in his native California, or less sea-level rise in Kiribati.
Sometimes it is impossible for McCauley to ignore how climate change has changed his surroundings. He recently took a group of students to the woods near Santa Barbara to learn about the carbon cycle, but had difficulty teaching the lesson because almost all of the trees around them had died of drought, beetle infestation, or forest fire.
“I have too real a sense of how bad things are going to get with climate in such a short amount of time,” he said.
Still, he manages to marvel at the natural world, and the mysteries it holds.
Back aboard the Fish 1, not long after the container ship — and an oil tanker — had passed by, one of the whales came right underneath the boat. It surfaced briefly about 10 feet away, flicking its tail and disappearing.
Later, over Zoom, McCauley reflected on that moment: “I have no good explanation for why a whale would swim under the boat and look up at us, other than that it can.
“Some piece of that is a reminder that they deserve a space on the planet because they are incredibly intelligent, incredibly complex and sophisticated animals, and wonder about us as much as we wonder about them.”
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