yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Whale Tagging and Why It's Done | Continent 7: Antarctica


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

My opinion, the most important piece of research coming out of the Antarctic right now is understanding how different species cope with the changing environments: the rapidly warming air, the increased amount of precipitation, the decreased amount of sea ice.

So, there's something special about the three or four areas right in here that there's always whales. We're trying to measure the underwater behavior and movements of the whales, get an estimate of their size, and we're trying to understand what whales need to survive and the manna food that they eat.

If you don't eat enough, you're not gonna reproduce. If you don't reproduce, it's a very quick process into your population not growing. These tags are basically like a smartphone that record the angle of the whale, whether it's rolled over on its side, the heading of the whale, the depth, and the speed of the whale.

And it does that hundreds of times a second. It also records video, which is awesome because we can then sort of corroborate the things that the sensors are telling us with what we actually see the whale do. It's got two 720p cameras in there; we can get about nine hours of continuous data, and all of that packaged together gives us a really precise estimate of the health of the animals down here.

Tagged data and UAV data combined is gonna be opening new worlds, really. So, let's find some whales.

Yeah, let's do it! We're in Wilhelmina Bay, one of the locations that we've worked in for a long time, and we're gonna try and deploy one of the video recording multi-sensor tags on a humpback. These animals move over big distances very quickly.

They're a real pain to work with because they're difficult to find. Do you guys want to get the drone in the air? It's fun to be in a bad spot.

What's that? There it is! Oh nice, yeah, that's good! When we're approaching these whales, it's definitely a high-risk kind of situation. If it's flu and the zodiac, you would flip us over with that much... you know, trouble.

You probably have five or six minutes in that water at the most before hypothermia would set in, and it would be game over. Anywhere you can put it, it will happen. But the work is definitely not over.

The suction cup tags archive all the data on them, so we have to retrieve that tag to get anything back. These animals get as curious about us as we do about them. It's looking at you, and it's kind of wondering what you're doing there, and we're asking the same kind of questions.

Lars, correct me if I'm wrong. This is the first-ever flight in the Antarctic, right, for this equipment?

Yes, that's correct! Couldn't ask for more except for Lars, Tobias, a couple of drinks.

More Articles

View All
Parents, learn how to boost writing skills with Khanmigo
Hey parents, we know that trying to help your kids with their essays can often feel like navigating through an unknown city without a map. But don’t worry, we’re here to provide the compass that you need. We’re proud to present our latest Kigo feature: ac…
The Immigrant Journey Behind A Silicon Valley Success Story
Immigrants, we get the job done. Today we’re sitting down with one of the best founders of a generation, Tracy Young, co-founder of PlanGrid, which sold to Autodesk for 875 million dollars, who’s back with her new startup called Tiger Eye. But today, sinc…
Would You Take This Bet?
I want you to consider this bet. Here’s $10; this could be yours if I flip this print in the air. You guys call it in the air. If you’re right, I’ll give you the $10. If you’re wrong, you give me $10. That’s not a good bet for me, I guess. In principle, …
Binompdf and binomcdf functions | Random variables | AP Statistics | Khan Academy
What we’re going to do in this video is use a graphing calculator to answer some questions dealing with binomial random variables. This is useful because if you’re taking the AP Stats, the Advanced Placement Statistics test, you are allowed to use a graph…
Mind Reading
Mind reading? Of course not. I love reading. Look, mind reading might sound like pseudoscientific—pardon my language—bullshoot. But its scientific counterpart, thought identification, is very much a real thing. It’s based in neuroimaging and machine learn…
Brave New Words - Supt. Buffington, PhD, Tim Krieg, PhD, & Sal Khan
Hi everyone, s here from KH Academy and as some of you all know, I have released my second book, Brave New Words, about the future of AI in education and work. It’s available wherever you might buy your books. But as part of the research for that book, I …