Hoot's Dugong Adventures with Nikon D200 GeoTagging
Where are the dog-gone dogongs?
In collaboration with researchers from the Centre for Dolphin Studies, South Africa, we will be conducting aerial surveys of the Bazaruto dugong population. The work forms part of an ongoing environmental impact assessment that is being carried out to determine the potential impacts of planned offshore gas exploration activities.
The flights will cover the area between the Rio Save mouth and the southern end of Bazaruto Bay and will be conducted three times a month, from April 2007 up to and including November 2007.
Click here to find some Dugongs
A company aircraft will be stationed at Vilanculos or Inhassoro for the duration of the work there.
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Red Hen/ Conservation Air Patrol-South Africa Report
04/08/07
• Arrived in JoBurg at 11:00 am and met up with Peter Ragg at the hotel and took a nap which was needed from my flight from Heathrow.
• On my second ten hour leg my right knee locked up with gout and I was some what crippled.
• Jet lag was at it worst this day and continued on to the next day.
04/09/07
• Met with Peter Lamberti (independent film maker with many National Geographic credits)and discussed his connections with the SA special Opps procurement folks.
o sDVR 8006 had failed and was hung in booting. Peter and I completely disassembled the unit with one Philips screw driver and found the video capture card had dislodged from the riser. We reassembled the unit and it works great. 8006 is a very old build and I believe goes back before Ken stepped in and made the units more stable. I might be wrong so correct me if so.
• Met with Pietre and discussed how he wants to use the laser range finder to average the elevation of the red hen plane to place the video into his GIS project.
• My knee is still locked in retched pain but Ibuprofen is my best bet.
04/10/07
• Scheduled a meeting with Peter Lamberti and the SA special Opps procurement team for 04/11/2007 at 4:00 PM.
• Peter and I will present the Red Hen Recorder and demonstrate..
04/11/2007
• Peter’s computer crashed and is a total fatality.
04/12/2007
• Peter and I will fly to Mozambique to film the Dugong (Manatee) from the air using the Red Hen Recorder and the Nikon D200 with GPS as well as the Sony HD video camera with the Red Hen VMS 300.
• Met with Darren and his girl friend at the airport.
• Peter and I flew to Nelspurt and met up with Pietre. Pietre and I downloaded heaps of Mpeg2 data from the Zambia transect. The transect was quite interesting as it was seven hours in the Cessna 152. A failure occurred in the last three 20 min. segments. I believe it was due to video capture issue as the GPS files were created but the video was black. Tomorrow we will fly over Kruger National Park on the way to Mozambique. Kruger has the big five, Elephants, Lions, Rhinos, Leopard and Capped Buffalo.
• Pouring down rain but the roast mutton dinner was to die for.
• Two many batteries and cables. I will be running sDVR 8006 tomorrow.
04/13/2007
• Still raining and Peter and I are off to the Nelspurt airport.
• We succeeded in getting all four Intercoms to work with sDVR 8023 so we can have commentary from all three observers along with the pilot.
• Kruger International airport will not let us take off in the heavy rain and fog but we go anyway and are turned back by the control tower only to be sent out again towards Maputo. We made the one hour flight to Maputo Mozambique where we basically sneak in through immigration for 100 Rand. Maputo is somewhat like Mexico as far as the poverty level but very few street lights and the vendors kiosks are very dark.
• We get two rooms at the Hotel Mozambique for 59 Rand each and head on down to restaurant Costa del sol for prawn dinner. The prawns are enormous at about 10 to 12 inches. They are sliced open from the belly and char grilled in the shell. Served with Portuguese rice and lime they were the best I have ever had. We had a Portuguese sparkling white wine and then four double brandies.
• It’s off to the night clubs in down town Maputo for African jazz at 11:00 pm.
04/14/2007
• 8:00 am and we are heading for the Maputo International airport for our three hour flight to Vilanculos and the islands of Bazaruto. The area had been rigorously hit by a cyclone three weeks prior and we had a chance to document this with the Nikon D200 with GeoTooth.
• Landed at Vilanculos airport where the hanger and fire brigade buildings were leveled. Had the strangest calamari lunch while waiting for a lift north to true paradise. Staying at Fannie’s home and compound on the beach. Fannie is Swazi and is developing 20 3,500 sq ft homes on the beach for $300K each.
• Had a great pork spare rib dinner and plotted 75 way point into Peter’s Garmin for the data collection transect tomorrow to count the Dugong colony’s. It will be a 5 hour flight back and forth over the shallows just off the islands.
• I am organizing a BBQ tonight using the spices I purchased at the Indian market back in JoBurg, that’s another story as I was the only Yank among many Muslims and Hindus.
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