Tag Archives: Drones
Drones and high-tech cameras used to catch illegal crabbing activity in New South Wales
More than 460 crabbing offences have been detected by the NSW Department of Primary Industries during the six-month Operation Portunus. The 60 officers involved used drones and long-range surveillance cameras to locate illegal traps and crab fishing activity up and down the east coast of the state. Director of fisheries compliance Patrick Tully said the statewide operation had been aimed at reducing illegal crab trapping. “Crabs are very valuable. They’re easy to catch but there are rules,” he said. “Anything that we detect that’s outside the rules we treat as illegal fishing, and we hope people understand that in those situations you can face some pretty tough consequences.” click here to read the story 09:23
A Drone May Save Your Life in the Future.
Drones have many uses—from military strikes to package delivery. One of the most important uses is to save lives. In times of emergency, a drone is often the cheapest and most efficient way to find a missing person, deliver needed medicine, or survey a disaster scene. In the case of cardiac arrest, it could take an EMT ten or more minutes to get to the scene. Brain death occurs in 4 – 6 minutes. An emergency drone can get a defibrillator to a patient within a 5 square mile zone within a minute, increasing the chance of survival from 8 percent to 80 percent. The drone tracks emergency mobile calls and uses GPS to navigate to the crisis. This same drone can be used by the Coast Guard when they are a distance from a capsized boat. Aside from dropping multiple flotation devices to conscious victims to buy time until the Coast Guard reaches them, GPS transmitters in the flotation devices enable the Coast Guard to pull the survivors from the cold water faster. Read the rest here 13:57
The NOAA Drones! Unmanned vessels deployed for Alaska ocean research
Researchers in the Bering Sea off Alaska’s west coast will get help this summer from drones, but not the kind that fly. The NOAA and private researchers are gathering data on marine mammals, fish and ocean conditions from two “autonomous sailing vessels” built by Saildrone, an Alameda, California, company. “Think of a 20-foot outrigger canoe with an airplane wing sticking up from the middle,” said Chris Sabine, director of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Lab, at a press teleconference Friday. They hold great appeal for researchers because they’re far cheaper to operate than research ships and they can work in dangerous conditions of the North Pacific. Researchers will use the vessels to gather information on pollock, an important species for commercial fishermen and the main prey of northern fur seals, a species that has declined. Instruments on board also will collect oceanographic data used to track environmental changes. Read the rest here 22:48
Drones don’t fly at Alaska’s Board of Fish – Audio
The Alaska Board of Fisheries closed some waters near Angoon to purse seining in order to improve subsistence harvests, in action over the weekend (3-1-15). They also shot down the use of unmanned aircraft to aid in salmon fishing. The Board rejected the proposed ban on spotter planes. Drones, however, were not so lucky. Proposal 205 would ban the use of unmanned aircraft in salmon fisheries. Read the rest here 09:59
