The Snot Bot flying overhead with sensors below to measure how whales react when being approached by drones. (via Ocean Alliance)
Drones may begin to usurp dogs as man's best friend... or at least researcher's best friend. Ocean Alliance in conjunction with some researchers and students from Olin College of Engineering have developed 'Snot Bot' the friendly flying robot that collects 'blow' from whales. Why? Whale 'blow' is the snot that whales eject through their blow holes as they surface for air. So, whales actually aren't simply ejecting water out of their blow holes they are ejecting snot with a powerful force – that is quite a sneeze. This whale snot is important as researchers can gain important information like hormone levels, stress levels, DNA, and more. From a big picture standpoint, having more readily available whale snot samples on a regular basis can allow researchers to gain a better picture of how life is going under the sea and whether human interference is lowering a whale's quality of life. For instance, are whales afraid of huge ocean liners? Do whales experience noise pollution as a result of humans crossing through their environment on party boats?
And most importantly, how is this affecting their lives, if at all? Whale blow has always been valuable to researchers, but the current methods of collecting whale blow is invasive as it causes the whale stress, and is also dangerous – no one wants to be hit by a whale's tail. While robot assisted technology is already being used to collect samples, it hasn't been done with a flying drone before. This method is meant to be unobtrusive: so stealthy that the whales don't even notice. It is also much cheaper than the current technologies used, costing about $2,800 in total.
How does the Snot Bot work? It is really simple, actually. A drone is flown above the whale's blow hole as it surfaces and it has sponges attached to it which catch the whale snot as it hovers above. Then the drone can fly back to the boat and researchers can harvest their precious samples. The researchers do have to get permission from the Federal Aviation Commission (FAA) in order to try this on real whales.
Recently, they have been testing their drone technology on a type of whale emulator which is basically sensors hovering above the water on catamarans. The sensors capture what a whale would hear, see, and feel when the Snot Bot collects samples. Their data suggests that whales would hear, feel, and see very little. However, the FAA can be a tough cookie to crack.
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