[Coral-List] drone used to photograph reefs

Sat Jun 29 03:23:31 UTC 2019

On the 100k drone:

Yes, the upfront cost is pricey. But for an organization like NASA, this is a small project. The billable hours alone for two graduate students spending just one year each research diving, collecting data, and publishing a paper approach this, not factoring in other field work costs. Drones are reusable indefinitely (until they break or become obsolete, of course); graduate students are not. Coupled with the inherent risk of diving, there is no reason to pay students to complete this survey. 

The students can instead be paid to learn how to process big data more efficiently, and maybe even find useful trends on an annual time frame. Take “supercomputer” with a large grain of salt - it is a buzz word, along with AI, machine learning, etc. Most of this “supercomputing” work is done on spec’d out Xeon work stations rather than true supercomputers. If you’re interested in what supercomputers are actually used for, LANL’s Cray XC40 runs exclusively for classified national security and DOE missions. 

What a shame Nature posted such an ambiguous, click bait article. Hope the prices for the camera goes down soon - sounds neat. 

Cheers,
Noah van Hartesveldt

> On Jun 28, 2019, at 15:20, Douglas Fenner via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:
> 
> So fantastic whiz-bang technology!  Great!!  We'd all like to be able to
> finally see what the reef looks like, each bump, hole, and coral colony, on
> our computer screens in the office or lab.  Never mind that it is only a
> tiny patch of the world's reefs.  Article didn't say how much 6 mo of
> supercomputer time to crunch the data will cost.  Surely vastly more than
> the $90,000 for the camera and $15,000 for the drone.  How practical will
> that be for mapping the world's reefs?  What major coral reef problem will
> be solved by this?  Will it solve some major mystery about reefs?  Will it
> save any reefs or corals?  I didn't see an answer to that in the article.
> A person was quoted in this article as saying it is faster than having
> someone go underwater and take a lot of pictures and stitch them together.
> But clearly not faster if you include computer time.  Instead of 6 mo of
> supercomputer, you can do the computer processing on your own computer in a
> few hours with software that is dirt cheap compared to a supercomputer for
> 6 mo.  For the price of supercomputer for 6 mo, you could provide funding
> for reef management for a whole country for a year or more, I would guess.
> Or voluntary birth control for a whole small country for a year or so (I'm
> totally with you on that, Alina!).
>    I'm playing "devil's advocate" here.
>     Cheers,  Doug
> 
> 
>> On Sat, Jun 29, 2019 at 7:04 AM Nicole Crane <nicrane at cabrillo.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> Just saw a presentation on this while in Guam. Super!
>> Nicole
>> 
>> On Fri, Jun 28, 2019 at 10:25 AM Douglas Fenner via Coral-List <
>> coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:
>> 
>>> Drone takes to the skies to image offshore reefs
>>> 
>>> 
>>> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01988-9?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20190627&utm_source=nature_etoc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20190627&sap-outbound-id=F6879643729B698E3E09146A03F27DA843F58E1B&mkt-key=005056B0331B1ED782EEA4D8C7ECAFA3
>>> 
>>> 
>>> open access
>>> 
>>> (Note the cost and that it may take 6 mo of supercomputer time to analyze
>>> the data from 5 sq m.  Also doesn't say how deep it can image or how image
>>> degrades with depth.)
>>> 
>>> Cheers,  Doug
>>> --
>>> Douglas Fenner
>>> Ocean Associates, Inc. Contractor
>>> NOAA Fisheries Service
>>> Pacific Islands Regional Office
>>> Honolulu
>>> and:
>>> Consultant
>>> PO Box 7390
>>> Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799  USA
>>> 
>>> A call to climate action  (Science editorial)
>>> 
>>> https://science.sciencemag.org/content/364/6443/807?utm_campaign=toc_sci-mag_2019-05-30&et_rid=17045989&et_cid=2840296
>>> 
>>> New book "The Uninhabitable Earth"  First sentence: "It is much, much
>>> worse
>>> than you think."
>>> Read first (short) chapter open access:
>>> 
>>> https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/read-a-chapter-from-the-uninhabitable-earth-a-dire-warning-on-climate-change
>>> 
>>> Want a Green New Deal?  Here's a better one.
>>> 
>>> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/want-a-green-new-deal-heres-a-better-one/2019/02/24/2d7e491c-36d2-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html?utm_term=.a3fc8337cbf8
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Coral-List mailing list
>>> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
>>> https://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list
>>> 
>> --
>> Nicole L. Crane
>> Faculty, Cabrillo College
>> Natural and Applied Sciences
>> www.cabrillo.edu/~ncrane
>> 
>> Senior Conservation Scientist, Project co-lead
>> One People One Reef
>> onepeopleonereef.ucsc.edu
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
> -- 
> Douglas Fenner
> Ocean Associates, Inc. Contractor
> NOAA Fisheries Service
> Pacific Islands Regional Office
> Honolulu
> and:
> Consultant
> PO Box 7390
> Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799  USA
> 
> A call to climate action  (Science editorial)
> https://science.sciencemag.org/content/364/6443/807?utm_campaign=toc_sci-mag_2019-05-30&et_rid=17045989&et_cid=2840296
> 
> New book "The Uninhabitable Earth"  First sentence: "It is much, much worse
> than you think."
> Read first (short) chapter open access:
> https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/read-a-chapter-from-the-uninhabitable-earth-a-dire-warning-on-climate-change
> 
> Want a Green New Deal?  Here's a better one.
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/want-a-green-new-deal-heres-a-better-one/2019/02/24/2d7e491c-36d2-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html?utm_term=.a3fc8337cbf8
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