Coastal Drone Monitoring

Photo credit: Arie Spyksma: Shag swimming under water chasing a school of fish in Ōrewa. 

The most frequent connection people have with the ocean is in the coastal waters. These areas that we swim, snorkel, fish and surf in are important to many different species of marine animals. We’re using small Mavic 3 drones, flying at an altitude of 30 m to survey these coastal spaces to identify different species. We’re using artificial intelligence (AI) tools to train a model to automatically detect different species – such as eagle rays, sting rays, herons, shags, gulls and swans – and their behaviours – whether their sitting, swimming under water or flying.

Our preliminary work focused on sandy and muddy coastal habitats throughout the Hauraki Gulf region has recorded drone imagery of 14 different species (two rays and 12 birds) highlighting the rich biodiversity in these coastal zones. We have footage of shags chasing school of fish near Ōrewa, large flocks of swans swimming near Pt Chevalier and herons catching small fish in the shallows.

Even though we’re early into the project, we have trained the AI model on seven different species and behaviours with high levels of accuracy in detecting these when we run new footage through the model. This makes processing the data a lot faster.

We will continue to record more footage of these species and new species so we can continue to grow the number of animals we can detect. Next, we will work on the best way to survey these spaces to determine abundance of the different species and how their habitat use changes over time and with different environmental pressures.

About the researcher

Rochelle Constantine, Faculty of Science