7 News Belize

Drones Zone in on Marine Protected Areas
posted (February 27, 2019)
On last night's news, we told you about the 3-day regional workshop that the Wildlife Conservation Society is hosting in Belize.

As we told you, the 10 marine protected areas of Belize are being policed using what are being called Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tools - or "SMART" for short. The conservationists are also making use of drones while patrolling the marine protected areas to discourage illegal fishing activities.

They invited us out to Goff's Caye this afternoon for a field demonstration of these drones in action, and we spoke to the Country-manager about the trip. Here's what she told us:

Nicole Auil Gomez, Country Director - WCS
"This trip to Gough's Caye was really organized for us to demonstrate some of the technologies that we've have been presenting yesterday and we will finish tomorrow. So, we are demonstrating aerial drone, we are demonstrating undersea drone and we are demonstrating the smart application. So, today we were able to bring everybody out of the classroom and bring them out into the field to really see what these technologies can do in real life and for them, of course, to enjoy a little bit of Belize. So, we have 10 countries here represented and we certainly wanted to make sure they got to see a bit of our beautiful barrier reef system. So, that's what we are doing here."

Daniel Ortiz- Reporter
"You look at these different technologies and it looks as though you are playing with just high-tech devices. Have you all been making good use of them professionally?"

Nicole Auil Gomez, Country Director - WCS
"Oh, certainly. All the marine protected area managers in Belize use the smart application, for instances. And several of them are starting to use drones. And we have terrestrial protected areas that use drones. So, the drones are for multiple use or you can have identification of vessels if it's out at sea, to shorten the time of search on water, so saving fuel, and it also can be used for looking at habitat and looking at megafauna; so, perhaps sharks or manatees or dolphins. So, yes, they are being practically used. The underwater drone is just being tested right now."

We'll take a closer look at these drones and the the SMART system itself in tomorrow's news.

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7 News Belize