Ocean Alliance (USA)
Ocean Alliance, founded in 1971, is one of the world’s first organisations dedicated to protecting whales. Its mission is to protect whales and their ocean environment through research, scientific collaboration, education, and the arts.
Since its foundation, Ocean Alliance has pioneered many of the benign research techniques commonplace in whale science today, including photo ID and bioacoustics.
More recently, they have gained a reputation for pioneering drone technology in whale science, which are rapidly becoming an increasingly common and powerful tool in this field. Through their SnotBot programme and, more recently, their tagging work, they have helped to push whale science/conservation into the 21st century.
In 2022/2023, the Eurofins Foundation supported the deployment of tags on whales using drones through two objectives:
- Developing new systems:
- A robust ‘whale surrogate’ for more advanced testing was developed, and this involved melting and casting ballistic gels into shapes and forms more accurately reflecting a whale.
- A gyro-stabilized system to stabilize the fall of the tag when it is released from the drone.
- A ‘swing-arm release’ system that decreases the possibility of the drop mechanism failing.
- A compact packing system for the radio transmitter gear (battery, radio receiver, antennae, on/off switch) to make it easier to attach/detach.
- A quick-release/hot-swap modular attachment system. Rather than changing the drone setup each time a different tag is dropped, Ocean Alliance designed a one-size-fits-all modular attachment that permanently fits the drone, and other tags can attach to the module.
- Deploying advancements in the field (some examples):
- North Atlantic right whales: In June 2023, Ocean Alliance deployed eight tags on critically endangered North Atlantic right whales as part of a NOAA/federal research trip. This expedition was a cornerstone of the government’s efforts to understand and protect this species. Bad weather during the trip prevented the NOAA team from deploying their small boat, severely limiting how much data they could collect during the expedition. The ability to fly the drone and deploy tags from the large vessel was invaluable.
- Fin whales: In July 2023, Ocean Alliance worked with Duke University and Syracuse University to tag fin whales off Massachusetts’s coast. This trip aimed to understand better how offshore wind energy development might impact endangered fin whales. They ended up deploying a total of 28 data tags on fin whales. This is one of the most extensive data sets ever collected on fin whales globally in a two-week period.
- Hawai’i: In February 2023, Ocean Alliance field tested a new system for disentangling large whales using drones. Whales becoming entangled in fishing lines/ropes/nets is a big problem. In response to the problem, disentanglement teams were created to cut the whales free. However, this is difficult and potentially dangerous. Ocean Alliance is exploring using drones to make whale disentanglement activities safer and more They worked with one of the world’s foremost experts on whale disentanglement – Dr. Ed Lyman and trialed several systems for using drones to assist in whale disentanglement activities. As part of this, they deployed five data tags on whales.
The Eurofins Foundation renews its support to Ocean Alliance in 2023/2024 to keep developing the research on whale tagging.
These projects contribute to the following United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals
