The great white sharks that have been frightening the budgie smugglers off hyperphobic swimmers on the North Coast have followed the cold currents south (see pic below), much to everyone's relief. You can follow their movements via the DPI Fisheries North Coast Shark Tracking page here. The jury here is still out on acoustic trackers and abdominal insertions. Something about attaching noise-making things to marine creatures does not sit well with me.
It looks like I'll finally make it out to do some seas turtle surveys on the reefs around Cape Byron before the summer is out, hooray! The more I study sea turtles in temperate waters the more I want to know and share with everyone. While scrolling around sea turtle networks I keep reading the line "Sea turtles live in tropical waters...', but I'm here to tell you that's not entirely true. At least in New South Wales, which falls well below the Tropic of Capricorn, there are without a doubt foraging sea turtles on reefs above 20m. I hesitate to write "resident" or "a population of" because we're talking about a highly migratory suite of species that, if you were to define their 'residency' over a life time, resides across the entire South Pacific region. Protecting individuals is logistically and legally impossible over their life span, however protecting sites and corridors vital to their survival is not. It's not only possible, it's immediately necessary to protect these threatened species and in light of the quality of information that is now becoming available, it is time to review those protections and their boundaries. I will write extensively on protection boundaries in my thesis, but for now I want to bring your attention to the quality of information.
There is huge potential value in obtaining video footage of my turtles surveys on reefs in NSW, particularly if I ever manage to get to the remote Middleton and Elizabeth Reefs. The video survey methods include baited cameras and transect surveys and both methods would provide me with presence or absence of sea turtle species data. In the process of researching these methods my chief advisor sent me a GoPro Hero4 Session (which comes with me on my next survey) so I set about familiarising myself with the potential use of it when I came across the heart-stopping, eye-widening capabilities of the 360 spherical rig and stitching software and the results. If you haven't yet had the pleasure, viewing a 360 video on your mobile device practically puts the camera in your hands. You can turn around to look behind you, look up, look down, view any direction. It's just amazing and it's also really accessible to everyone.
The first 360 video I experienced was using the Facebook app on my iphone to view a surfing video produced in Tahiti. I was in the barrel! But the part that grabbed my attention was in the first few moments, when the camera goes below the water to view the reef and I realised just how many researchers would be able to gather data from it.
GoPro Spherical: Tahiti Surf VR
Anthony Walsh and Matahi Drollet bring us inside some of the biggest barrels Tahiti has to offer in full 360°.For the most immersive experience, click and drag on your desktop, or move your iOS device in any direction.
Posted by GoPro on Thursday, 12 November 2015
More digging and I came to the XL Catlin sea survey project which blew my mind. They get around the oceans surveying different locations (see pic below) and provide the video online, which you can view as quadrats or video, it's also very versatile.
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Then I discovered that Mythbusters (a popular American television program) had been employing the technology to do some experiments with shark deterrents (below) which are not only fascinating but the footage of the sharks swimming around you is just mesmerising (on a desktop computer you can still move around in the video using the navigation buttons that appear in the top left corner of the video frame, otherwise use the youtube app for free gyroscopic rotation).
I can't wait to use this video capture technique soon to show you more wonders of our marine world. In the meantime, you may like to skip over the acidic rant below on the lack of funding for postgraduates in Australia.
Unfortunately finding collaborators and sponsors to source cameras, rig and software is proving difficult. Naturally Mythbusters aren't coming to help but I can't even raise interest from the Australian Institute of Marine Science who already have the rig and are closely affiliated with my university, which has been disheartening. An extended series of emails with Kolor, the subsidiary of GoPro on the topic ended with "let us put you in touch with a trainer in Australia". Unless that trainer comes with cameras and a rig for me that's not very useful. What a struggle it seems to be to undertake what the Australian federal government suggested should be done a decade ago but the state governments have failed to deliver on, threatened species monitoring. Why does each government ignore the last? There appears to be lots of grants available, but most of them are green-wash smokescreens that would barely cover the basic costs of getting in the water, let alone filming the place for the benefit of all. Also for the amount of time and effort you put into lodging the applications for pocket-change funding by squeezing your project into their narrow-minded guidelines, including repeatedly annoying your network for references, you can imagine that after a few 'we're not interested in sea turtles in NSW despite it being repeatedly identified as a high priority and data deficient area' replies that in the end you just stop applying. If I proposed training turtles to find all I'd be drowning in money. Insomuch as I'm now booking my attendance to the annual International Sea Turtle Symposium, I also feel the need here to point out that the majority of these grants will not help you get to the international conference on your topic either. Most of them, in fact, specifically rule out that option in their eligibility criteria 'will not fund conference attendance'. Despite the fact that the conference you have been invited to present at is very rarely held in Australia and is one of the very few opportunities to meet and greet colleagues who work in your field across the world, the costs of travelling from this our remote island to engage our peers are apparently not worth the investment, or a paltry $500 is offered by greying power-mongers who think that you'll still get a great deal if you 21 day advance purchase your flight with Ansett. Thanks, not sure what I'll tell the pilot when I'm a third the way over there unless the Australian dollars really swings. So this month it's either buy your own gopro spherical rig or accept an invitation to present at the conference. I'm not sure if I've made the right decision, but I'll be reporting from Peru soon.
Happy wildlife watching!
