With research funding at critically low levels these days, WHOI engineer Amy Kukulya and guest investigator Kara Dodge, turned to crowdfunding to get money for a project to tag and track leatherback turtles using an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). We helped out by producing a short video for their Project TurtleCam crowdfunding campaign.
Through Project WHOI, Amy and Kara hope to raise $10,000 to prove the AUV-tracking concept. If funded, they will be able to spend 5 days tagging and tracking leatherbacks in Nantucket Sound— and we’ll be there, following the story for WHOI’s Oceanus magazine.*
What’s next? If succcessful, this research could translate to other turtle species, and maybe even humpback whales!
*Project update: see the video here!