Planes watching over Australia's marine mammals

7:39 PM Wed 29 Sep 2010 GMT

'The team of Pete Cassimatis, Amanda Hodgson, Marty Evans, Carl Brown, Neil Smith and Rich Clifford holding the ScanEagle UAV at Shark Bay - Murdoch University' Neil Smith

Unmanned aircraft have been zooming around Shark Bay for the past week in Australia's first trial to see whether these military style drones can help us manage and conserve our marine mammals. Murdoch University's Dr Amanda Hodgson, funded by the Australian Marine Mammal Centre, has enlisted the help of Insitu Pacific and their ScanEagle Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), to investigate if UAVs are a cost-effective and capable alternative to fixed-wing, manned aircraft for surveying marine mammals. 'A huge benefit of UAVs is that they eliminate human risk - we don't have to have observers flying low over large areas of ...

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by Freya Contos/Murdoch University