Simultaneous biological sampling and tagging of a whale without disturbing the animal has long been a goal of biologists. Tags have been used for over 30 years, but most of the technology development went into the tags, and not the delivery systems. Working together, lain Kerr at Ocean Alliance and research ecologist Dr David Whiley at NOAA decided to try and change that. To put what happened next into perspective - to tag 3 Sei whales over a 14-day period was considered ambitious, involved a very large budget, 11 people and three boats. The two scientists and their team headed to the Sea of Cortez in the Gulf of Mexico in 2022 to test out a drone delivery tag system on a modified SnotBot, seeking to sample and tag the giants of the ocean - blue whales and fin whales, which were there to breed and feed. The results were extraordinary in many ways. But first the delivery system had to be perfected.
展开▼
