Quick summary
Tissue samples from stranded, injured and free-swimming marine mammals can provide rich information on individual genetics, population dynamics, foraging ecology, physiology, and health. Collecting tissue samples is often logistically challenging and poses risks to responders. Small unmanned aerial systems (‘drones’) have become widely used in marine mammal science and offer an enticing platform for remote sampling. The primary objective of this project is to develop and test a system that can be used to remotely collect skin and blubber biopsy samples of marine mammals using drones. The concept is that a researcher can launch the drone from shore or vessel, use a live camera feed to position the system above the focal animal, remotely deploy a tethered biopsy dart to collect a tissue sample, and fly the sample back for preservation. The successful development of such a system would: 1) increase the capacity to collect samples (lower cost, deployable from any platform, higher success rate), 2) reduce risk to human responders, and 3) reduce stress to living marine mammals associated with sampling events.
We have developed a prototype system we’re calling the SeaBee with funding support from the NOAA Prescott grant. We have an operational prototype and are currently working with IFAW to conduct carcass testing. If that is successful we will take steps to test the system on free-swimming marine mammals in support of ongoing biopsy sampling projects. In the future we are hoping to modify the system for other applications, such as non-invasive tag deployment or disentanglement.