A helicopter’s rotor design may allow for vertical takeoffs but that comes at a price — the backwards moving blade counteracts the helicopter’s forward momentum, causing it to stall at high speeds. But one German firm believes that outfitting the blades with bumps inspired by the fins of humpback whales. More »
Sea Shepherd — the environmental organisation defending whales against arsehole Japanese whalers on “researcher” cosplay — have a powerful new weapon: unmanned aerial vehicles. They have located a Japanese whaling fleet 1600km north of the Southern Ocean whale sanctuary using a drone. More »
The alternative Nobel Prize awards, the Ig Nobels, have been called for another year, with this particular winner making everyone laugh with a remote-controlled helicopter that collects whales’ mucus and breath. A deserving winner, I think you might agree. More »
At the tail-end of last year, researchers managed to successfully collect close to a terabyte of recordings of beaked whales off the coast of Hawaii, using the first acoustic-equipped undersea glider to travel to the depths some 1000m down. More »
Instead of harpooning a whale for samples, wouldn’t it be easier to just collect their snot using an R/C helicopter? More »
PALAOA, the Perennial Acoustic Observatory in the Antarctic Ocean, listens to the waters below Antarctica for the sounds of whales and other marine mammals amidst a soundscape of constantly shifting ice. Here’s what they’re hearing, right now. More »
Regardless of your feelings about whaling, you have to admit the fight just got a whole lot more interesting. Check out this video of a Sea Shepherd–manned (from Whale Wars) carbon-fibre, biofuel-powered EarthRace Trimaran blinding a Japanese whaling boat with lasers. More »
This microphoned submarine glider has been collecting ocean sounds for a few weeks. When it is plucked from the sea in a week, researchers will use software to parse its audiofiles for rare beaked whale songs. More »
