Got whale boogers? SnotBot the drone does! Scientists fly it through plumes of whale blow to collect samples. The drone also takes photos and videos. Around the world, researchers are using drones to help study and protect animal populations.

Christian Miller, Ocean Alliance Inc.

SnotBot is on a mission. The toaster-sized drone flies over the open ocean, directly above a rare sei whale. On a boat nearby, Andy Rogan beams with joy. He’s been studying whales his entire career, but had never seen this species.

Rogan is a marine biologist with Ocean Alliance, an organization based in Gloucester, Mass. Right now, though, he’s on an expedition near the Azores — islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

All of a sudden, whuffff! The giant whale sends up a cloud of snot. It completely soaks the hovering drone.

Rogan cheers. That’s exactly what his team hoped would happen. SnotBot has a petri dish on board. Now, that dish contains sei whale snot, also known as whale blow. “Sometimes it smells sort of fishy,” says Rogan. “[It] has the consistency of water. It’s more like seawater than slime.” So maybe it’s not as gross as human boogers. But it does contain mucus. And the DNA in that mucus can give scientists important information about whales.

SnotBot also carries a camera. On some flights, operators remove the petri dish. Then they send the bot out to take pictures and videos of whales from above. Explains Rogan, “Drones have allowed us to get a clearer understanding of how whales swim, how they behave, how they interact and how many travel in a group.”

He and SnotBot aren’t alone. Around the world, people who work to better understand and protect wildlife are using drones to help the cause. Some are counting seabirds in colonies at the Falkland Islands in the remote South Atlantic. Others are tracking and counting endangered muriquis monkeys in Brazil and orangutans in Sumatra (an island in Indonesia). And in Africa, drones and camera traps are keeping an eye out for poachers who might harm rhinos and other protected animals.

SnotBot flies through the blow of blue whales in the Gulf of California off the coast of Mexico. The mucus in whale blow contains DNA. Researchers use these DNA samples to better track and understand whale populations.

Wildlife researchers often trek through jungles and underbrush to find animals. They may peer at whales from boats or fly in helicopters to view animals from above. Such flights are very expensive and sometimes dangerous. Plus, their noise may scare animals. And helicopters can’t fly very far out over the ocean because there’s nowhere to land or refuel.  

Back in 2011, Lian Pin Koh and Serge Wich wondered if there might be an easier way to get similar types of data. “We both realized that counting animals is such an enormous effort,” says Wich. “We thought, ‘What if you fly over them with a flying camera?’”

Wich is an ecologist and conservation expert at Liverpool John Moores University in England. Koh is an ecologist at the National University of Singapore. Together, they cobbled together a drone from a remote-control model airplane, hacked camera equipment and sponges. The sponges absorbed the drone’s vibrations, explains Wich. That way the images wouldn’t be too blurry. At the time, it was possible to buy drones, but they cost tens of thousands of dollars. This do-it-yourself version cost less than $2,000. Wich and Koh call it a conservation drone.

And it did the trick. On a test flight, the drone captured an image of an orangutan in its nest at the top of a very tall tree. “That was a very exciting moment,” says Wich. The pair realized this was just the beginning of a whole new way of doing conservation work. They also started the group Conservationdrones.org to share what they were learning with other researchers across the globe.

Fabiano Melo is one of those researchers at Federal University of Viçosa in Brazil. As an ecologist, he studies the Northern muriqui. This rare, large monkey inhabits the tropical forests of Brazil. “They live literally in peace,” says Melo. “Nobody fights about females or about food. They just eat flowers and leaves.” Yet these monkeys are critically endangered. Only some 1,000 remain in the wild.

Forest fires are their biggest threat. Most often, people set these fires to clear land for farming. Those fires also destroy the animals’ habitat. Melo must know where the muriquis are to make sure people aren’t allowed to set fires near them.

But finding rare monkeys in a vast jungle wasn’t easy — until he learned about drones. Melo piloted one for the first time in 2017. Now, he says, his colleagues call him “the master of drones.”

His latest drone, nicknamed “Dronequi,” has a hybrid camera. It can take regular photos and videos. Or it can use a thermal sensor to detect heat. Getting this sensor felt like a miracle to Melo. It could detect muriqui body heat even when the animals were hidden among the thick leaves and branches in tree canopies at the top of the forest.

During 2020, Melo and his team flew Dronequi over five different sites in Brazil. They discovered a group of 15 muriquis that no one had known existed. “When we find a new group, I go crazy,” he says. “I scream a lot. I have tears in my eyes.” Finding a new group means that there are more muriquis in the wild. Now Melo’s team can work with the government and private landowners to protect where these monkeys live. Or, if necessary, the team can move the animals to a site that’s safer or closer to others of their kind.

Madeline Hayes is a drone pilot and graduate student at Boston University in Massachusetts. She remembers a time in college when she felt really discouraged. There seemed to be too many environmental issues plaguing the planet. When she discovered drone technology, though, she gained new energy. “You can get so much more data,” she says. And all those data mean that “you can explore brand new questions no one has been able to explore before.” Hayes has flown drones to investigate water quality in Morehead City Harbor in Beaufort, N.C., and invasive aquatic plants in the Lake Champlain Basin in Vermont.

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For one recent project, though, she didn’t get to pilot the drones. A different team of researchers had already captured drone images from the Falkland Islands (also known as the Malvinas Islands). They’re just east of the southern tip of South America. The images showed colonies of thousands of black-browed albatrosses and southern rockhopper penguins. The two seabirds nest together.

A few decades ago, black-browed albatrosses were listed as endangered. Thanks to conservation efforts, their numbers have been growing. But southern rockhopper penguin populations are falling. That’s mostly because climate change and overfishing have made it harder for them to find food. They are considered vulnerable, which is slightly less worrying than the “endangered” label. But even vulnerable species could go extinct if nothing is done to help them. Experts need to keep an eye on both types of birds.

Before researchers had drones, they had to go to the islands and count birds manually. This was expensive and time-consuming. They could only afford to spend the time and money to do a full count once every five to 10 years. And a lot could happen to the birds between counts.

Hayes, though, came up with a way to count birds automatically from drone images. She used machine learning. This is an artificial intelligence, or AI technique that uses huge sets of examples to train a computer program. Afterward, that program can recognize patterns in data, such as penguins in camera images. In the beginning, Hayes says, “I did not have an AI background in the slightest.” But she found the resources she needed to figure it out.

The most time-consuming part was creating the examples needed to train and test the computer. She had to provide it with enough examples of each type of bird. The only way to do that was to go through thousands of images, one by one, drawing rectangles around every single bird — 45,000 in all. “I know it seems crazy,” she says. She got through it by listening to audiobooks while she worked.

Now that she’s done this, nobody will ever have to do it again. The model she trained can recognize both types of birds. It’s slightly better at finding albatrosses — they’re bigger and lighter in color. The penguins are more likely to resemble rocks or shadows. But the program does an excellent job with both. Ninety percent of its automatic counts matched manual human counts. That means the difference between the two counts was 5 percent or less.

Serge Wich doesn’t have to build his own drones anymore. But he’s still tinkering. Wich and colleagues Carl Chalmers, Paul Fergus and Steven Longmore are building AI that automatically detects many types of animals. Chalmers and Fergus are computer scientists. Longmore is an astrophysicist. They all work at Liverpool John Moores University. They call their project Conservation AI. When someone uploads an image or video, the model analyzes the data. Then the model identifies anything it can. So far, it recognizes lions, elephants, rhinos, zebras, people, cars and much more.

To add a new species or object to this list, the Conservation AI team must follow the same process as Hayes. They must go through thousands of images, manually drawing and labeling rectangles.

Researchers can use this model to locate or count animals. Wich hopes someday people will also use it to protect animals from illegal hunting, known as poaching. Many wildlife preserves already use drones and camera traps to watch over protected species. But typically a ranger has to keep an eye on the camera feed. In the future, an AI model could keep watch instead. It could send automatic alerts when a drone or camera sees suspicious activity.

The team tested this idea in a study in East Africa, published last year. Students and staff at a field site in Tanzania pretended to be poachers. The researchers flew drones over the pretend poachers at different times of day. Sometimes the actors were walking. Other times they stood still. They might have been hidden under leaves or out in the open. Sometimes the researchers used drones equipped with regular cameras. At other times they had thermal cameras.

Overall, people looking at the drone images did a better job than the AI model at finding pretend poachers. The model picked out many things (such as shadows and rocks) that weren’t people at all. Yet the model also found poachers that most people missed. “We’re certainly pleased with the results,” says Wich. With a little more work, he thinks that systems like this will make it easier for rangers to better protect endangered animals.

Yet, he cautions, this technology won’t end poaching. The real solution is to make it impossible to sell endangered-animal parts or to make sure the people who want to sell them instead find other options for work.

In addition, he points out that many endangered species live in remote areas. Here, internet connections may be spotty or nonexistent. That matters because people must upload images and video via the internet to use Conservation AI.

There’s another problem, too. In low-income parts of the world, conservationists may not be able to afford the equipment needed to study and protect species. Drones help make this work a bit less costly. Rogan’s team recently published a paper describing exactly how to use drones to study whales. In the near future, these researchers hope that the resources and technology to do conservation work will become widely available anywhere in the world.

 “Tech,” Wich says, “needs to be accessible for everyone.”

albatross: A type of large seabird with webbed feet and slender wings. Albatrosses are powerful gliders and spend most of their lives over the ocean, scooping up fish and squid from the water’s surface.

aquatic: An adjective that refers to water.

artificial intelligence: A type of knowledge-based decision-making exhibited by machines or computers. The term also refers to the field of study in which scientists try to create machines or computer software capable of intelligent behavior.

astrophysicist: A scientist who works in an area of astronomy that deals with understanding the physical nature of stars and other objects in space.

Atlantic: One of the world’s five oceans, it is second in size only to the Pacific. It separates Europe and Africa to the east from North and South America to the west.

basin: (in geology) A low-lying area, often below sea level. It collects water, which then deposits fine silt and other sediment on its bottom. Because it collects these materials, it’s sometimes referred to as a catchment or a drainage basin.

biologist: A scientist involved in the study of living things.

blow: (noun) A term for the materials exhaled by whales through their blowholes. This can include air, mucus, germs and sometimes even seawater.

bot: (short for web robot) A computer program designed to appear that its actions come from some human. The goal is to have it interact with people or perform automated tasks such as finding and sharing online information through social-media accounts.

camera trap: A still or video camera set to activate when motion is detected. The device is often used to monitor wildlife. It can also be used to record poachers.

canopy: (in botany) The top layer of a tree — or forest — where the tallest branches overlap.

climate change: Long-term, significant change in the climate of Earth. It can happen naturally or in response to human activities, including the burning of fossil fuels and clearing of forests.

cloud: A plume of molecules or particles, such as water droplets, that move under the action of an outside force, such as wind, radiation or water currents. 

colleague: Someone who works with another; a co-worker or team member.

computer program: A set of instructions that a computer uses to perform some analysis or computation. The writing of these instructions is known as computer programming.

conservation: The act of preserving or protecting something. The focus of this work can range from art objects to endangered species and other aspects of the natural environment.

data: Facts and/or statistics collected together for analysis but not necessarily organized in a way that gives them meaning. For digital information (the type stored by computers), those data typically are numbers stored in a binary code, portrayed as strings of zeros and ones.

DNA: (short for deoxyribonucleic acid) A long, double-stranded and spiral-shaped molecule inside most living cells that carries genetic instructions. It is built on a backbone of phosphorus, oxygen, and carbon atoms. In all living things, from plants and animals to microbes, these instructions tell cells which molecules to make.

ecologist: A scientist who works in a branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings.

endangered: An adjective used to describe species at risk of going extinct.

expedition: A journey (usually relatively long or over a great distance) that a group of people take for some defined purpose, such as to map a region’s plant life or to study the local microclimate.

extinct: An adjective that describes a species for which there are no living members.

federal: Of or related to a country’s national government (not to any state or local government within that nation). For instance, the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health are both agencies of the U.S. federal government.

field: An area of study, as in: Her field of research is biology. Also a term to describe a real-world environment in which some research is conducted, such as at sea, in a forest, on a mountaintop or on a city street. It is the opposite of an artificial setting, such as a research laboratory.

forest: An area of land covered mostly with trees and other woody plants.

graduate student: Someone working toward an advanced degree by taking classes and performing research. This work is done after the student has already graduated from college (usually with a four-year degree).

habitat: The area or natural environment in which an animal or plant normally lives, such as a desert, coral reef or freshwater lake. A habitat can be home to thousands of different species.

hybrid: An organism produced by interbreeding of two animals or plants of different species or of genetically distinct populations within a species. Such offspring often possess genes passed on by each parent, yielding a combination of traits not known in previous generations. The term is also used in reference to any object, process or idea that is a mix of two or more things.

internet: An electronic communications network. It allows computers anywhere in the world to link into other networks to find information, download files and share data (including pictures).

invasive: An adjective that refers to something that can invade some environment (such as an invasive species) or alter some environment (such as invasive medical procedures).

machine learning: A technique in computer science that allows computers to learn from examples or experience. Machine learning is the basis of some forms of artificial intelligence (AI). For instance, a machine-learning system might compare X-rays of lung tissue in people with cancer and then compare these to whether and how long a patient survived after being given a particular treatment. In future, that AI system might be able to look at a new patient’s lung scans and predict how well they will respond to a treatment.

marine biologist: A scientist who studies creatures that live in ocean water, from bacteria and shellfish to kelp and whales.

model: A simulation of a real-world event (usually using a computer) that has been developed to predict one or more likely outcomes. Or an individual that is meant to display how something would work in or look on others.

mucus: A slimy substance produced in the lungs, nose, digestive system and other parts of the body to protect against infection. Mucus is made mainly of water but also includes salt and proteins such as mucins. Some animals use mucus for other purposes, such as to move across the ground or to defend themselves against predators.

orangutan: One of the great apes (which also include gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos), this red-haired tree dweller shares 97 percent of its genes in common with humans. They can live for 60 years, with adults weighing 48 to 130 kilograms (105 to 286 pounds) depending on gender, age and health, with males being bigger. They have opposable thumbs (as humans do) and also opposable big toes, which aids in their gripping.

peer: (noun) Someone who is an equal, based on age, education, status, training or some other features. (verb) To look into something, searching for details.

penguin: A flightless black-and-white bird native to the far Southern Hemisphere, especially Antarctica and its nearby islands.

poaching: (in ecology) To illegally hunt and take a wild animal or plant. People who do this are referred to as poachers.

population: (in biology) A group of individuals (belonging to the same species) that lives in a given area.

seawater: The salty water found in oceans.

sensor: A device that picks up information on physical or chemical conditions — such as temperature, barometric pressure, salinity, humidity, pH, light intensity or radiation — and stores or broadcasts that information. Scientists and engineers often rely on sensors to inform them of conditions that may change over time or that exist far from where a researcher can measure them directly. (in biology) The structure that an organism uses to sense attributes of its environment, such as heat, winds, chemicals, moisture, trauma or an attack by predators.

Singapore: An island nation located just off the tip of Malaysia in southeast Asia. Formerly an English colony, it became an independent nation in 1965. Its roughly 55 islands (the largest is Singapore) comprise some 687 square kilometers (265 square miles) of land, and are home to more than 5.3 million people.

species: A group of similar organisms capable of producing offspring that can survive and reproduce.

Sumatra: A part of the island nation of Indonesia, this is one of its bigger islands (and indeed, the sixth largest island in the world). 

system: A network of parts that together work to achieve some function. For instance, the blood, vessels and heart are primary components of the human body's circulatory system. Similarly, trains, platforms, tracks, roadway signals and overpasses are among the potential components of a nation's railway system. System can even be applied to the processes or ideas that are part of some method or ordered set of procedures for getting a task done.

Tanzania: A nation in East Africa that sits just south of the equator. It’s well known in science communities as home to the East African Rift valley, where many hominid fossils have turned up. With a small population, many big wildlife species remain, including lions, rhinos, elephants, zebras, hippos, cheetahs and giraffes. The country is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east; Kenya and Uganda to the north; Ruwanda, Burundi and Democratic Republic of Congo to the west; and Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique to the south. It became a country in 1964. It’s official capital is Dodoma.

technology: The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry — or the devices, processes and systems that result from those efforts.

thermal: Of or relating to heat.

whale: A common, but fairly imprecise, term for a class of large mammals that lives in the ocean. This group includes dolphins and porpoises.

Journal: S. Atkinson et al. Genetic, Endocrine, and Microbiological Assessments of Blue, Humpback and Killer Whale Health using Unoccupied Aerial Systems.Wildlife Society Bulletin, Vol. 45, December 24, 2021. doi: 10.1002/wsb.1240.

Journal: M.C. Hayes et al. Drones and deep learning produce accurate and efficient monitoring of large-scale seabird colonies. Ornithological Applications. Vol. 123. August 1, 2021. doi: 10.1093/ornithapp/duab022.

Journal: K.E. Doull et al. An Evaluation of the Factors Affecting ‘Poacher’ Detection with Drones and the Efficacy of Machine-Learning for Detection. Sensors. Vol. 21. June 13, 2021. doi: 10.3390/s21124074.

Journal: F.R. de Melo. Drones for conservation: new techniques to monitor muriquis. Oryx. Vol. 55, Published online February 23, 2021. doi: 10.1017/S0030605321000028.

Journal: B. Keller and T. Willke.SnotBot: A whale of a deep-learning project. IEEE Spectrum. Vol. 56, December 2019. doi: 10.1109/MSPEC.2019.8913832.

Journal: C. Chalmers et al. Conservation AI: Live Stream Analysis for the Detection of Endangered Species Using Convolutional Neural Networks and Drone Technology. arXiv. October 16, 2019. arXiv:1910.07360.

Journal: L.P. Koh and S. Wich. Dawn of Drone Ecology: Low-Cost Autonomous Aerial Vehicles for Conservation. Tropical Conservation Science. Vol. 5, June 1, 2012. doi: 10.1177/194008291200500202. 

Kathryn Hulick is a freelance science writer and the author of Strange But True: 10 of the World's Greatest Mysteries Explained, a book about the science of ghosts, aliens and more. She loves hiking, gardening and robots.

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