Unmanned aircraft to aid study of ice seals in Alaska

Science Daily: NOAA's Fisheries Service scientists and their partners have launched an unmanned aircraft to mount the vehicle’s first search for ice seals at the southern edge of the Bering Sea pack ice during the Arctic spring, in an effort to learn more about these remotely located species.

On May 13, the NOAA research vessel McArthur II departed Kodiak, Alaska, and headed for the Bering Sea to launch the ScanEagle, an unmanned aircraft that is being used to collect images and video along the ice edge.

NOAA's Fisheries Service scientists from the Alaska Science Center’s National Marine Mammal Laboratory, in cooperation with the University of Alaska’s Cooperative Institute for Arctic Research, will use the images, taken during the month-long expedition, to evaluate whether unmanned aircraft could be useful for estimating the abundance and distribution of ice seals. In 2008, NOAA determined that ribbon seals should not be listed under the Endangered Species Act. NOAA was also petitioned to list spotted, bearded and ringed seals, and is gathering information and preparing status reviews for those species.

“The distributions of ice seals are broad and include areas very far from shore,” said Michael Cameron, NOAA's Fisheries Service’s lead scientist on the expedition. “Using traditional, manned aircraft to survey all of the sea ice habitat in Alaskan waters would be challenging, expensive and potentially dangerous. We hope that the ScanEagle will provide a safe and efficient way to collect information in this remote environment.”…

A bearded seal, not deigning to look up at the monitoring plane