An Ocean First: Underwater Drone Tracks CO2 In Alaska Gulf
May 26th, 2022
Via AP News, an article on the use of underwater drones to to measure carbon dioxide levels in the ocean:
In the cold, choppy waters of Alaska’s Resurrection Bay, all eyes were on the gray water, looking for one thing only.
It wasn’t a spout from humpback whales that power through this scenic fjord, or a sea otter lazing on its back, munching a king crab.
Instead, everyone aboard the Nanuq, a University of Alaska Fairbanks research vessel, was looking where a 5-foot (1.52-meter) long, bright pink underwater sea glider surfaced.
The glider — believed to be the first configured with a large sensor to measure carbon dioxide levels in the ocean — had just completed its first overnight mission.
Designed to dive 3,281 feet (1,000 meters) and roam remote parts of the ocean, the autonomous vehicle was deployed in the Gulf of Alaska this spring to provide a deeper understanding of the ocean’s chemistry in the era of climate change. The research could be a major step forward in ocean greenhouse gas monitoring, because until now, measuring CO2 concentrations — a quantifier of ocean acidification — was mostly done from ships, buoys and moorings tethered to the ocean floor.
“Ocean acidification is a process by which humans are emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through their activities of burning fossil fuels and changing land use,” said Andrew McDonnell, an oceanographer with the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks
Oceans have done humans a huge favor by taking in some of the C02. Otherwise, there would be much more in the atmosphere, trapping the sun’s heat and warming the Earth.
“But the problem is now that the ocean is changing its chemistry because of this uptake,” said Claudine Hauri, an oceanographer with the International Arctic Research Center at the university.
The enormous amount of data collected is being used to study ocean acidification that can harm and kill certain marine life.
Rising acidity of the oceans is affecting some marine organisms that build shells. This process could kill or make an organism more susceptible to predators.
Over several weeks this spring, Hauri and McDonnell, who are married, worked with engineers from Cyprus Subsea Consulting and Services, which provided the underwater glider, and 4H-Jena, a German company that provided the sensor inserted into the drone.
Most days, researchers took the glider farther and farther into Resurrection Bay from the coastal community of Seward to conduct tests.
After its first nighttime mission, a crew member spotted it bobbing in the water, and the Nanuq — the Inupiat word for polar bear — backed up to let people pull the 130-pound (59-kilogram) glider onto the ship. Then the sensor was removed from the drone and rushed into the ship’s cabin to upload its data.
Think of the foot-tall (0.30-meter) sensor with a diameter of 6 inches (15.24 centimeters) as a laboratory in a tube, with pumps, valves and membranes moving to separate the gas from seawater. It analyzes CO2 and it logs and stores the data inside a temperature-controlled system. Many of these sensor components use battery power.
Since it’s the industry standard, the sensor is the same as found on any ship or lab working with CO2 measurements.
Hauri said using this was “a huge step to be able to accommodate such a big and power hungry sensor, so that’s special about this project.”
“I think she is one of the first persons to actually utilize (gliders) to measure CO2 directly, so that’s very, very exciting,” said Richard Feely, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s senior scientist at the agency’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. He said Hauri was a graduate student in 2007 when she accompanied him on the first acidification cruise he ever led.
The challenge, Feely said, is to make the measurements on a glider with the same degree of accuracy and precision as tests on board ships.
“We need to get confidence in our measurements and confidence in our models if we are going to make important scientific statements about how the oceans are changing over time and how it’s going to impact our important economic systems that are dependent on the food from the sea,” he said, noting that acidification impacts are already seen in the Pacific Northwest on oysters, Dungeness crabs and other species.
Researchers in Canada had previously attached a smaller, prototype CO2 sensor to an underwater drone in the Labrador Sea but found it did not yet meet the targets for ocean acidification observations.
“The tests showed that the glider sensor worked in a remote-harsh environment but needed more development,” Nicolai von Oppeln-Bronikowski, the Glider Program Manager with the Ocean Frontier Institute at Memorial University of Newfoundland, said in an email.
The two teams are “just using two different types of sensors to solve the same issue, and it’s always good to have two different options,” Hauri said.
There is no GPS unit inside the underwater autonomous drone. Instead, after being programmed, it heads out on its own to cruise the ocean according to the navigation directions — knowing how far to go down in the water column, when to sample, and when to surface and send a locator signal so it can be retrieved.
As the drone tests were underway, the U.S. research vessel Sikuliaq, owned by the National Science Foundation and operated by the university, conducted its own two-week mission in the gulf to take carbon and pH samples as part of ongoing work each spring, summer and fall.
Those methods are limited to collecting samples from a fixed point while the glider will be able to roam all over the ocean and provide researchers with a wealth of data on the ocean’s chemical makeup.
The vision is to one day have a fleet of robotic gliders operating in oceans across the globe, providing a real-time glimpse of current conditions and a way to better predict the future.
“We can … understand much more about what’s going on in the ocean than we have been before,” McDonnell said.
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Read More »Drones and Live-Streams: How Tech Is Changing Conservation
June 7th, 2021
Via BBC, a report on the impact of drones and live-streams in conservation:
Drones, satellites and laser sensors. It sounds like the tech of an action-packed spy thriller.
Not things you might typically associate with protecting animals.
According to a report by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), the planet’s wildlife population has plummeted by 68% since 1970, with threats including things like poaching and loss of habitat.
But around the world, animal conservation has now evolved so it’s not just rangers and anti-poaching groups monitoring the wildlife of our world.
So just how is technology helping to modernise animal conservation?
The most recent eye-catching example of technological innovation can be found in the Balule Nature Reserve in South Africa, part of the huge Kruger National Park.
Camera phones mounted in protective cases streamed images of animals to people worldwide.
Thousands, sat comfortably at home, became virtual rangers with this anti-poaching pilot project, Wildlife Watch, by Balule, Samsung and Africam.
Viewers were able to report suspicious activity – things like seeing fence lines cut or hearing gunshots – and alert rangers to the possibility of poachers and trapped animals needing rescue.
For Leitah Mkhabela, a member of the park’s all-female anti-poaching unit known as The Black Mambas, creative use of technology can make a big difference.
“The live-stream is a great tool that helps us monitor even more areas in real time. The public helps us with watching and listening for anything suspicious,” the 28-year-old tells Radio 1 Newsbeat.
She describes one such incident.
“People saw something, suspected it and then reported it. When we went, a lion was freezing and the first line of the fence was broken.”
“Once poachers become aware that there could be more cameras in the bushes, they’ll be worried as we have so many eyes monitoring.
“It will definitely help chase them out.”
And this live-stream isn’t the only innovation.
“There are people on every continent in different environments using every sort of technology,” Stephanie O’Donnell tells Newsbeat.
Stephanie is from the Fauna & Flora International (FFI) conservation group and leads the Wild Labs programme, a project aimed at bringing conservation and tech together.
“We use acoustic devices which listen out for specific animal calls and tracking tags that monitor where animals are going and migrating.”
In Africa, the group is working closely with the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, which is home to the last northern white rhinos.
It’s not just about animals on land.
Big satellite, data-driven projects monitor deforestation and illegal fishing, with drones and underwater microphones being used to try and understand the behaviour of endangered whales.
“One of the big challenges for conservationists is manually going through millions of bits of images and data by hand to analyse them,” Stephanie says.
But that’s where Wildlife Insights comes in – an artificial intelligence project between organisations such as WWF, ZSL and Google.
“You can upload camera images and have machine-learning automatically identify what species are in there and analyse their data.”
For Leitah of The Black Mambas, all of these methods are a welcome change.
“In the beginning, we had to work with a pen, notebook and GPS to document the information we found.”
“But technology is getting better each year. Now we enter data into an app, which lets us send information quickly and directly to our operations room.
“So we can monitor teams in the field in real time and it helps with fast decision-making when suspicious activity is found.”
Stephanie says it’s also about using technology the right way, something people learn over time after the initial hype of a particular type of technology being “used for everything”.
Things like camera traps and drones have been around for a while, but only in recent years has it been figured out “how to apply them effectively”.
“And that’s things like rapid response to poaching incursions or providing communication photography, ground surveys and tracking.”
The future
Leitah feels greater technology and initiatives like live-streaming can help fill a big gap.
“Think about classrooms and teachers. When they are busy teaching, they can use 15 minutes of their time to go live and watch the reserve, whether they are in South Africa or not.”
“Kids in classrooms, people at home can help us have more eyes and ears in the reserve, watching and detecting.”
Stephanie says using long-lasting technology is incredibly important.
“We need technology to withstand really challenging conditions. Sometimes it needs to be out in the field for years; for example an animal tracking collar on a rhino needs to last five years because there’s always risk in too much intervention.”
“It’s not a silver bullet, it’s not going to solve everything, but it can have a really big impact for conservation,” she adds.
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Read More »In Sri Lanka’s Deep Waters Marine Conservation Goes Hi-Tech
March 27th, 2017
Via Eurasia Review, a look at how drones and mobile applications are changing marine conservation efforts in Sri Lanka:
As the midday sun rises higher over Gulf of Mannar, a drone hovers over the blue mass of sea water. Below, a motley crowd of fishermen gathers, straining their eyes at a drone.
A few metres from the crowd, conservationist Prasanna Weerakkody operating the drone raises it to 500 metres, before moving it slowly in different directions, allowing the device to film a large swathe of water.
One day, he believes, the roving camera of this drone will send images of one of the most elusive sea mammals in this ocean: the dugong.
“Dugong usually swims at a depth of about 5-10 metres. Being mammals, they also come above water every few minutes to inhale fresh air. The drone has the capacity of rising one km high, but we usually operate it at 400-500 metres. This is enough to capture images of dugong,” says Weerakkody, whose organisation – Ocean Resources Conservation Association (ORCA) – is a partner of the four-year Global Environment Facility (GEF) funded, multi-agency environmental initiative: the Dugong and Sea Grass Conservation Project.
Saving the Ocean’s Most Vulnerable
The dugong – a manatee-like creature known locally as “sea pig” – is listed as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which is also a partner in the conservation project.
The world’s only vegetarian sea mammal, the dugong lives at a depth of 5-15 meters, feeding on sea grass. Its natural habitat is vast – stretching from Eritrea in East Africa to Vanuatu in the Pacific. However, there is no documented information on their numbers in Sri Lankan waters. Very little is also known about their behaviour and movement, such as when and how they move, which part of the sea or grass bed they frequent and why, and which seasons are the most favourable. In short, most questions that one can raise about a dugong here are unanswered.
The main reason, says Arjan Rajasurya, Project Manager at IUCN Sri Lanka, is that the dugong is a very “secretive” animal which rarely shows up. “There may be a dugong right under a boat, but you will not know of its existence because it does not jump through the water like a dolphin or squirt water like a whale,” he explains.
The secretiveness is proven by the fact that none of the officials involved in the multi-agency conservation project has ever seen a live dugong.
And yet as many as 13 dugongs are known to have been killed in the past three years, many of them reported by the local media. Sri Lanka’s National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency (NARA) – a marine research organisation – has also carried out autopsies on some dead dugong.
Locals – especially fishermen whose gill nets catch and kill dugongs – are also tight-lipped and seldom come forward to share information on the sea mammal, probably fearing punitive actions by the government or backlash from other fishermen.
Besides gathering missing information on the mammal and its habitat and chalk out a strategy to protect both, the 4.88 million dollar Dugong Conservation project, which took off in mid-2015, also aims to curb illegal fishing and bridge the communication and awareness gap with the locals. To help achieve this, use of a drone was decided as a crucial component, say the project partners.
Killer War Tool as Marine life Protector
Technically, a drone is an unmanned aircraft with powerful cameras that capture images below. It can be either remotely controlled or fly on its own using software such as onboard sensors and GPS. Extensively used by security forces in war zones, the drone has lately gained a reputation as a dangerous killer machine that drops bombs on people – ‘terrorists’ and civilians alike.
The most extensive – and controversial – use of drones has been in Pakistan and in the Middle East where the war against terror has been raging for years.
However, here in the deep waters of Sri Lanka, the technology is a last-mile effort to save critically endangered marine animals by monitoring their movement, studying their habitat and preventing their capture and killing by illegal fishers.
According to Weerakkody, who leads a dedicated team of marine life experts, this is probably the first time ever that drone technology is being used for marine conservation. “This is a Phantom basic pro robotic machine fitted with a camera that can shoot over 2 K video, which is almost three times as clear as the picture on your HD TV.”.
Apart from the drone, the ORCA team is using a side-scan sonar device that captures echoes from an object on the sea floor and creates its images after measuring the strength of how “loud” the return echo is.
However, this device can only work if it is placed on a moving object – such as a boat or an underwater vehicle – which produces a sound. So, if a dugong is right next to the sonar, but the solar carrier is still, the device will not be able to capture its image. Also, given that the dugong is a shy and secretive animal, it will most likely swim away when it senses a moving vehicle nearby.
An Everyman’s Mobile App
While the drone and the side-scan sonar are handled by highly skilled experts like Weerakkody, the project is also designing technologies that are user-friendly and can be used by community members with little or no training.
Channa Suraweera, Project Manager at Sri Lanka’s Department of Wildlife Conservation, demonstrated one such design to IDN: an application that can be used by locals to report sighting of a dugong or any other large sea animal.
Based on Smart Survey software, the app gives multiple options for a user to report what has been seen: a dugong, a dolphin, a whale or any other sea animal. In a few seconds, with a few clicks, someone can send a text and a photograph which will be stored at a government-run server. The department will analyse this information and add this is to a database on sea mammals which is currently being built.
“As of now, we have very little data on dugong and we cannot build an entire database on our own. So we built this app to involve the general public in collecting information and sharing it with us,” said Suraweera.”It’s very easy to use and any mobile phone user with an internet connection can provide us with data. Once we have enough data, we can create a concrete plan to protect the dugong. We can also use the data to popularise tourism in the country, especially in the southern part of the ocean where whales are seen.”
Promoting Digital Communication
Suraweera explained that he mobile app is actually a part of a larger plan to build a fully computerised marine conservation coordination centre given the current communication gap among various government agencies, locals and civil society organisations on the issue of sea mammal conservation.
Once established, the centre will help loop in each of these agencies – including the Sri Lankan Navy and Coast Guard – and providing training in the latest digital technologies developed by the department. “It will be a centre that will strengthen communication and also help create a robust digitised database on marine conservation,” Suraweera predicted.
High End Technology for a Biodiverse Future
Mekala Christopher is a young boatman in Kalpitiya who often ferries officials and tourists to the high sea to see corals and dolphins. On several occasions, Christopher has seen a drone in the sky, but he says he has “no idea what it is actually for” and that he is also unaware of the massive conservation initiative to protect sea mammals such as the dugong.
According to Suraweera, if this conservation project is to succeed, members of the local community like Christopher must have a way to extend their support to it. “This project can only create guidelines and a framework for action, but the real action can be taken only by locals. They need to take part in the information sharing system,” he says, pointing at the fishermen’s village on the shore.
Veerakkody, on the other hand, hopes that the future will see deployment of more drones with more sophisticated features. The accomplishments of the drone in the project’s first year have been satisfactory: images have revealed that the sea grass bed is largely fine, except for some sporadic damage caused by fishing trawlers. But a higher end drone with more advanced technology such as a 4k camera could help better monitor their movement and map the habitat. “Those devices could decide the course of tomorrow’s conservation,” he says confidently.
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Read More »As Lake Chad Shrinks Rapidly, Space Technology And Drones Are Needed To fight Africa’s Droughts
February 26th, 2017
Via Quartz, a look at how emerging technological opportunities for improving environmental monitoring and the need to act in time could help manage crisis like Lake Chad:
Nigerian and Chadian officials are seeking $50 billion for a major water diversion project to replenish Lake Chad. This is nearly twice the annual GDP of Uganda. But it’s understandable, the lake has shrunk by nearly 90% between 1963 and today.
The plan involves diverting water from the Oubangi River in Central Africa to replenish the lake. It is estimated that the feasibility study alone would cost nearly $15 million. The proposed project would also provide irrigation, energy, and transportation infrastructure aimed at stimulating economic development.
With the election of Chadian foreign minister Moussa Faki Mahamat as chairperson of the African Union Commission, the project and the larger security concerns will remain a priority for the organization as well as for diplomatic interactions with other regions of the world.
Lake Chad offers a grim cautionary tale of how lessons from chronic drought might inform our anticipation of the potential impact of climate change in many parts of Africa. It shows the close interconnections between ecological change, security, and development. But it also points to emerging technological opportunities for improving environmental monitoring and the need to act in time.
The lake straddles the borders of Cameroon, Chad, and Nigeria. This is the same region that is ravaged by the excesses of Boko Haram. It provides water for nearly 30 million people in the semi-arid Sahel region. Its overall basin is the largest closed drainage basin in the world covering 2.5 million square km, or about 8% of the African continent.
The prolonged Sahel drought from the late 1960s to the early 1980s reduced water flow into the lake. The drought, combined with population growth, pushed people in the catchment areas to expand irrigation. This further undercut the flow of water into the lake.
In 1972, the lake split into two, and was separated by a 40 km barrier. The southern lake is shallower and therefore more susceptible to evaporation. To restore the lake level, enough water would need to flow into the southern lake to overflow the barrier and replenish the northern lake. But this has been compromised by drought and irrigation. Simulation studies have shown that the failure of Lake Chad to merge back into a single water body following wetter periods in the 1990s resulted from irrigation. Without irrigation the lake would have probably merged in 1999, and again in 2004.
Lake Victoria’s challenge
The case of Lake Chad is too dramatic to contemplate. But other major water bodies such as Lake Victoria are vulnerable to similar, if not equivalent, impacts. Nearly 80% of the replenishment of Lake Victoria comes from rainfall, which feeds thousands of streams. The lake itself is relatively shallow, averaging 40 meters deep. A prolonged drought could affect large parts of the shoreline, destroying fish breeding areas and agriculture. This would put the lives of millions of people at risk.
Consequences of a receding shoreline due to prolonged drought is unknown. But it would be foolhardy to wait and see. Some people would turn to irrigation, especially on the Kenyan side of the lake, which has the largest number of rivers flowing into it. This would reduce the inflow of water into the lake. Considerable water and land use conflicts would ensue, making them national security challenges. The ramifications would extend to East Africa’s relations with the Nile basin countries, especially Egypt.
Little is known of the consequences of even modest receding of the shoreline due to prolonged drought. But it would be foolhardy to wait and see. The first step in addressing the problem is to conduct real time monitoring of ecological trends in the region. One of the most effective tools available today is satellite technology.
African countries are only starting to explore the use of space technology. Climate change and regional ecological disruptions are already rendering historical maps and geographical data useless. Traditional knowledge is no longer an effective guide for environmental management in light of climate change. Policymakers need a fresh start using modern technologies.
Part of the slow adoption of satellite technology is the perception that space technology is too expensive. The popular and false image of the technology is derived from the last century, when the space programs were too expensive for emerging countries.
This perception has persisted despite dramatically falling costs of developing such programs. African countries can now establish viable space programs with about $300 million. The costs could be shared by neighboring countries. The East African Community, for example, could have one regional space program instead five separate ones.
More countries around the world are now focusing on small satellites, which are easier to build and launch in modular constellations. This is also making it possible for students in South Africa to participate in the design of small satellites and the accompanying scientific experiments.
The other major concern is that the few space initiatives that exist in Africa focus more on turnkey projects. Instead, they should stress building the requisite human capacity needed to rise up the space ladder. The best place to build such capacity is in universities, not in secretive departments in government ministries.
The lifespan of a satellite is about 10 years. Countries that do not invest in continuous training quickly see their ground facilities rendered obsolete by technological change. A space program only functions effectively when it is supported by a strong human resource foundation on the ground.
The future of environmental monitoring is being transformed by the increased use emerging technologies such as civilian drones. Climate change offers Africa yet another reason to leverage the drones to complement satellite technology. Increasing the installation of weather stations across Africa would provide additional support for environmental monitoring. According to Gro Intelligence, the land mass of sub-Saharan Africa is 35 times that of Texas. Yet the two have nearly the same number of weather stations.
The long-term contribution of such efforts lies in building strong institutions of higher learning attached to major infrastructure projects. Such universities can then work with networks of technical institutes and high schools to broaden the base for competence in environmental management.
Investments in human resource development, especially in the engineering fields, will help African countries reduce the maintenance costs of infrastructure projects. Given the magnitude of the financial outlays needed for climate change abatement projects, the continent needs low-cost ways of providing evidence-based advice for the design, implementation and maintenance of infrastructure investments. Ways to do this include expanding the engineering divisions of African scientific academies as well as creating dedicated academies of engineering.
The specter of climate change will continue to haunt Africa. But it also offers new opportunities for tapping into emerging technologies for environmental monitoring to address improve development planning and identify emerging security challenges. Such anticipatory work might give the continent the knowledge needed to respond in time to ecological disasters.
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Read More »Drones Could Help Save The Environment
March 24th, 2016
Via BRIC+ New World News, a look at the growing impact of drones on conservation:
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), popularly known as drones, have the potential to revolutionise ecology and conservation, according to a study at New Zealand’s Monash University.
The report, published in the journal Scientific Reports, posits that drones are much more effective at monitoring the size of seabird colonies than traditional ground-counting methods.
“Until now, it has been unclear as to how precise drone technology might be when monitoring the size of populations of wildlife. Our latest research has demonstrated that a very high degree of precision can be achieved when using drone technology to monitor wildlife,” said Dr Rohan Clarke, ecologist at Monash University and one of the authors of the report.
Drones have long been used, primarily, for military purposes. However, in recent years, with many commercial models hitting the shelves, their uses have expanded tremendously. Recreational use is but one new market. Drones are tipped to become increasingly important in ecology and conservation.
UAVs have already been used to monitor elephant populations and nesting birds, however, their efficacy was not yet tested – until now. The report conducted two monitoring exercises on Ashmore Reef and Macquarie Island.
One experiment used traditional ground methods, the other used drones. The difference in precision was startling.
The researchers noted that drone counts were consistently larger than those conducted on the ground. The report claims that drone monitoring makes calculating fluctuations in population size much more accurate.
Not only this, but photographs of populations taken by drones were more clear, and drones had the added benefit of little disruption to the natural population.
“Our team compared the precision of drone-derived image counts with those made at the same time by human counters on the ground for colonies of three types of seabird: frigatebirds, terns and penguins.
“Counters also monitored the colonies during the drone flights for signs that the birds may be startled by the presence of the drone,” said Jarrod Hodgson, lead author of the report.
The results of the Monash University study have already begun to excite ecologists, who see this technology as a likely game-changer in the field of conservation.“The increased count precision afforded by UAVs, along with their ability to survey hard-to-reach populations and places, will likely drive many wildlife monitoring projects that rely on population counts to transition from traditional methods to UAV technology,” reads the report.The future of conservation may be here sooner than we think.
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Read More »Conservation Technology
December 19th, 2015
Courtesy of The Wall Street Journal, an interesting article on conservation technologist Shah Selbe’s use of data and drones to protect the planet:
Mr. Selbe, a Jacques Cousteau fan who grew up snorkeling and scuba-diving near Riverside, Calif., was looking for innovative ways to use technology to protect the planet. That is what he’s been doing ever since—while keeping his rocket-science day job at Boeing, which hired him straight out of college.
A self-described “conservation technologist,” Mr. Selbe, 33, combines mobile technology, satellite data and drones to better protect the environment. Used together, “these devices can watch over areas in ways that no single person could ever do,” he says.
As a graduate student at Stanford University, Mr. Selbe created an open-source, low-cost platform to pull data from satellites, drones and other monitoring systems to help identify illegal and unregulated fishing in the world’s oceans—a problem that preoccupies conservationists, who warn that overfishing could lead to a crash in world-wide fish stocks in the next three decades.
Mr. Selbe has developed a similar open-source system to monitor illegal wildlife trafficking and threats to water and air quality in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. “We want it to be open-source and used by the most people who can,” he says. “There’s a lot we gain by sharing information.” Starting last year, with support from the National Geographic Society (whose magazine employed me until 2014), Mr. Selbe worked with colleagues to set up hubs in the region, outfitted with solar-powered sensor platforms to gather data and rush details to communities on the ground via cellular networks.
The system has pinpointed problems at the local level. In one area of the Okavango Delta, data earlier this year indicated sudden, conspicuous changes in the water’s pH. “I thought the sensor was off,” Mr. Selbe says. It wasn’t: Tour boats were idling in that part of the delta, with their engines spewing toxins, making pollution concentrate in the water. Mr. Selbe and his team worked with the boat drivers to find better places to park and discouraged them from letting engines idle, letting the water quality return to normal.
In separate projects, Mr. Selbe has also deployed drones to patrol coastal regions and used hydrophones—underwater microphone networks—to detect noise from fishing vessels illegally entering protected ocean waters. Too often, Mr. Selbe says, those who monitor illegal fishing have had to just “jump in a boat until they see something.”In the seven years since Mr. Selbe began his conservation-technology efforts, his expertise has been tapped by the State Department, the Pew Environment Group and the Pacific island nation of Palau, among others. He envisions an “Internet of environmental things” in which entire nature reserves can be connected via smart technology to spot and reduce threats. “None of this is hugely groundbreaking from a technological perspective alone,” he says. “But from a technological and conservation perspective, it is.”
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