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Drones to control Sharks

The other day we were talking about whether or not Shark repellents really work or not? But the thing is that Australia has been testing drones against Shark attacks since 2017. Last year there were 26 incidents with sharks in Australia, and two of them were deadly. Sidney’s University of Technology (UTS) has created this Drone system in which the machines can detect up to 16 different types of objects, of which some of them are sharks, whales, dolphins, surfers and many ship models.

How does it work? Drones have been taking pictures, millions of pictures, in order to be able to identify the movement of each ‘object’. Sharks are detected with a precision of 90% (Humans have a 16% precision of spotting a shark). These drones belong to the Westpac Little Ripper Lifesaver company, specializing in maritime rescue.

“We can alert the surfers when drones detect suspicious movements”, says one of the creators, Nabin Sharma. Until now, measures included things like the installation of a super net to avoid sharks to get in the surfing area, but the thing is that that net was affecting other type of sea life, so something had to change. Robots are here to defend us, for now…

Fortunately Spain hasn’t got so many shark attacks, according to EL País only 3 attacks have occured since the XIX century, so here in the Canary Islands you can surf without any fear. Come to Tenerife and learn to surf.

 

 

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