Drones in Marine Conservation is quite the hot topic these days. They provide Marine Scientists and Conservationists with so many advantages when studying the marine environment at a much lesser cost than the traditional means of monitoring trends in marine species. For example, the grey seal population off Cape Cod can be counted using video and images collected from a drone compared to scientists renting a plane to do aerial surveys, which could cost 10s of 1000s of dollars. Drones provide more possibilities too.

I was fortunate enough to meet Dr. David Johnston, who is the Director of the Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing group at the Duke Nicholas School of Environment. He joined us on the podcast to tell us about the Marine Conservation work that he is doing using drones. The work has taken him and his team all around the world. 

Take a listen to find out how this wonderful technology can help further Marine Science and Conservation.

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Drones are normally known for being used robots for destruction by the military as well as spying on other people. For the most part, people still think of drones as dangerous; however, that reputation is getting better as drones are being used for various business services. 

Real estate agents use drones for making videos of the properties for sale and videographers are taking spectacular videos of scenery and wildlife. 

Conservationists are using drones as a way to gather date on subjects where we couldn't get data before. Coastal areas, wetlands, swamps, bayous, salt marshes, rocky coastal areas and shallow coastal areas. We couldn't access them because they were impossible to get to without running the entire habitat. 

Drones are able to solve that problem by flying areas that were inaccessible to scientists previously. Conservation of these areas are critical, but we need to show people how much and how valuable these coastal habitats are to the oceans.

There are so many drone applications for Marine Conservation that Andrew David Thaler, from SouthernFriedScience.com, wrote about at least 10 of them ranging from marine mammal monitoring to water quality sampling. The possibilities are endless and the limitations are few. 

Listen to the podcast to find out what Drones can do for Marine Conservation.

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