Drone Observations of Marine Life and Human–Wildlife Interactions off Sydney, Australia
Drones have become popular with the general public for viewing and filming marine life. One amateur enthusiast platform, DroneSharkApp, films marine life in the waters off Sydney, Australia year-round and posts their observations on social media. The drone observations include the behaviours of a va...
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ftmdpi:oai:mdpi.com:/2504-446X/6/3/75/ 2023-08-20T04:07:06+02:00 Drone Observations of Marine Life and Human–Wildlife Interactions off Sydney, Australia Vanessa Pirotta David P. Hocking Jason Iggleden Robert Harcourt 2022-03-11 application/pdf https://doi.org/10.3390/drones6030075 EN eng Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute Drones in Ecology https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/drones6030075 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Drones; Volume 6; Issue 3; Pages: 75 drone drones marine life shark whale human-wildlife citizen science feeding social media behaviour Text 2022 ftmdpi https://doi.org/10.3390/drones6030075 2023-08-01T04:25:50Z Drones have become popular with the general public for viewing and filming marine life. One amateur enthusiast platform, DroneSharkApp, films marine life in the waters off Sydney, Australia year-round and posts their observations on social media. The drone observations include the behaviours of a variety of coastal marine wildlife species, including sharks, rays, fur seals, dolphins and fish, as well as migratory species such as migrating humpback whales. Given the extensive effort and multiple recordings of the presence, behaviour and interactions of various species with humans provided by DroneSharkApp, we explored its utility for providing biologically meaningful observations of marine wildlife. Using social media posts from the DroneSharkApp Instagram page, a total of 678 wildlife videos were assessed from 432 days of observation collected by a single observer. This included 94 feeding behaviours or events for fur seals (n = 58) and dolphins (n = 33), two feeding events for white sharks and one feeding event for a humpback whale. DroneSharkApp documented 101 interactions with sharks and humans (swimmers and surfers), demonstrating the frequent, mainly innocuous human–shark overlap off some of Australia’s busiest beaches. Finally, DroneSharkApp provided multiple observations of humpback and dwarf minke whales with calves travelling north, indicating calving occurring well south of traditional northern Queensland breeding waters. Collaboration between scientists and citizen scientists such as those involved with DroneSharkApp can greatly and quantitatively increase the biological understanding of marine wildlife data. Text Humpback Whale MDPI Open Access Publishing Queensland Drones 6 3 75 |
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MDPI Open Access Publishing |
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drone drones marine life shark whale human-wildlife citizen science feeding social media behaviour |
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drone drones marine life shark whale human-wildlife citizen science feeding social media behaviour Vanessa Pirotta David P. Hocking Jason Iggleden Robert Harcourt Drone Observations of Marine Life and Human–Wildlife Interactions off Sydney, Australia |
topic_facet |
drone drones marine life shark whale human-wildlife citizen science feeding social media behaviour |
description |
Drones have become popular with the general public for viewing and filming marine life. One amateur enthusiast platform, DroneSharkApp, films marine life in the waters off Sydney, Australia year-round and posts their observations on social media. The drone observations include the behaviours of a variety of coastal marine wildlife species, including sharks, rays, fur seals, dolphins and fish, as well as migratory species such as migrating humpback whales. Given the extensive effort and multiple recordings of the presence, behaviour and interactions of various species with humans provided by DroneSharkApp, we explored its utility for providing biologically meaningful observations of marine wildlife. Using social media posts from the DroneSharkApp Instagram page, a total of 678 wildlife videos were assessed from 432 days of observation collected by a single observer. This included 94 feeding behaviours or events for fur seals (n = 58) and dolphins (n = 33), two feeding events for white sharks and one feeding event for a humpback whale. DroneSharkApp documented 101 interactions with sharks and humans (swimmers and surfers), demonstrating the frequent, mainly innocuous human–shark overlap off some of Australia’s busiest beaches. Finally, DroneSharkApp provided multiple observations of humpback and dwarf minke whales with calves travelling north, indicating calving occurring well south of traditional northern Queensland breeding waters. Collaboration between scientists and citizen scientists such as those involved with DroneSharkApp can greatly and quantitatively increase the biological understanding of marine wildlife data. |
format |
Text |
author |
Vanessa Pirotta David P. Hocking Jason Iggleden Robert Harcourt |
author_facet |
Vanessa Pirotta David P. Hocking Jason Iggleden Robert Harcourt |
author_sort |
Vanessa Pirotta |
title |
Drone Observations of Marine Life and Human–Wildlife Interactions off Sydney, Australia |
title_short |
Drone Observations of Marine Life and Human–Wildlife Interactions off Sydney, Australia |
title_full |
Drone Observations of Marine Life and Human–Wildlife Interactions off Sydney, Australia |
title_fullStr |
Drone Observations of Marine Life and Human–Wildlife Interactions off Sydney, Australia |
title_full_unstemmed |
Drone Observations of Marine Life and Human–Wildlife Interactions off Sydney, Australia |
title_sort |
drone observations of marine life and human–wildlife interactions off sydney, australia |
publisher |
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
https://doi.org/10.3390/drones6030075 |
geographic |
Queensland |
geographic_facet |
Queensland |
genre |
Humpback Whale |
genre_facet |
Humpback Whale |
op_source |
Drones; Volume 6; Issue 3; Pages: 75 |
op_relation |
Drones in Ecology https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/drones6030075 |
op_rights |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3390/drones6030075 |
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Drones |
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6 |
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3 |
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75 |
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