8 ms·

Albatrosses who catch pirates on the high seas

86 points by lelf 6y ago

jerkstate 6y ago
And a good south wind sprung up behind; The Albatross did follow, And every day, for food or play, Came to the mariner's hollo! In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, It perched for vespers nine; Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, Glimmered the white Moon-shine.' 'God save thee, ancient Mariner! From the fiends, that plague thee thus!— Why look'st thou so?'—With my cross-bow I shot the ALBATROSS.
- dreamcompiler 6y ago
  Had to memorize this in grade school. I'll never be able to appreciate it properly because of that trauma.
  - frabert 6y ago
    I absolutely despised having to memorize passages in school. To this day, I can't find a single way that has helped me.
ISL 6y ago
Sounds awesome -- hopefully there isn't an unintended consequence of encouraging illegal fishers to shoot down albatrosses. When you're already breaking some ethics/rules, it is much easier to break one more.
- toss1 6y ago
  Sounds like this would be a good job for a indefinite-flight-time solar-powered drone, flying up higher to get a broader view and stay out of range. The albatrosses already told us where to fly, now we need to put up some tech to catch the poachers. If they got reliably caught, fined, boats seized, few would bother.
  - jcun4128 6y ago
    side note: the star link satellites probably don't have cameras right... otherwise there's your constant eye in the sky with high res as opposed to the geosync ones train ML on normal fishing routes/paths to take, deviation, detects unexpected ships ooh
    - _underfl0w_ 6y ago
      Sounds fun until it's quietly applied at a nation state level to e.g. cars or foot traffic or similar. Once it's proven to "stop crime on the high seas" it would be easier to get further funding. AFAIUI the images wouldn't be able to be delivered fast enough for anything approaching realtime, but I haven't looked into their specs to know if they even have cameras either (plus isn't transmission speed a differentiating factor for them?). To make it worse, a tinfoil hat would just make you easier to spot on camera haha...
      - jcun4128 6y ago
        I was doubtful they would have cameras just because of payload/purpose "circuitry" but it also seems like a small thing to slap on there/extra sensor to get data. What a cool platform though, I had a fantasy like ssh'ing into a satellite and it's flying through the sky.
        toss1 6y ago
        Well, you are in luck!! The US Air Force AFWERX [1] Challenge is the combination of the defense, academic, startup, private sector and small business worlds to collaborate through challenges and live events, is running a Hack-A-Sat event [2] -- see if you can join! [1]https://www.afwerx.af.mil https://www.afwerx.af.mil [2] https://www.hackasat.com/?utm_campaign=AFWERX%20Fusion%202020&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=92783532&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--MnXQvAQsBsNvtozX-HbCRbNryMFksDftLj2M00PwzY4t56ATs6pOe2n669ViBficGZAGo5isyyw17e181__pzIHl00PXgv_oZu5SbqB4LYz0U_MY&utm_content=92783532 https://www.hackasat.com/?utm_campaign=AFWERX%20Fusion%20202...
- mc32 6y ago
  Apparently it’s not just “pirates“[1]There are state sponsored illegal fishing in the eastern & South Pacific by the usual suspects. [1] https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/30-03-2016/how-chinas-illegal-fishing-armada-is-plundering-the-south-pacific/ https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/30-03-2016/how-chinas-illeg...
  - ngcc_hk 6y ago
    Suspect it is china after the current Galapagos island operation. It turned out it is. Since ancient time ba ...
    - EdwardDiego 6y ago
      The Spanish, South Koreans and Taiwanese are masters of illegal fishing also, especially for Patagonian toothfish. But then the illegal fishing in Somali waters (that contributed significantly to the issues of piracy) was a veritable united nations... https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2019.00704/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2019.0070...
      - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
        >Patagonian toothfish. aka "Chilean sea bass" so that upper middle class westerners think it's a striper and don't bother to Google it.
        mc32 6y ago
        Lots of fish get friendlier marketing names (all the Cods and Basses) Chilean sea bass predates googling.
        throwaway0a5e 6y ago
        Most fish are marketed under their own name. Halibut, Cod, Flounder, Albacore, Smelt, Sardines, Anchovies, etc. You don't usually have trade names until you start getting into fish that weren't commonly fished for Western consumption until refrigeration plus depletion of fisheries made it possible and profitable to fish things half way around the world or fishing or fish some secondary species that was formerly considered by-catch. At least that's my observation. I've never done a comprehensive survey.
- jgeada 6y ago
  Illegal fishing should be treated as an act of war against the human race. Illegal fishing boats should just be sunk.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars were mostly net cutting and shouldering.
  - dTal 6y ago
    The verve with which you enforce lethal consequences on people who break the rules to survive, must be equally matched with a verve for helping those in need. Many of these people aren't illegally fishing for pleasure.
    - brutt 6y ago
      Why you have locked doors in your house? Maybe it better to help those who are looking for shelter or food instead of spending money on doors, locks, security cams, police, courts, jails, borders, army.
      - Jabbles 6y ago
        The parent said "equally matched", not "instead of".
      - rfrey 6y ago
        You equate locking my door at night with killing subsistence fishermen who are breaking fishing laws to survive?
        brutt 6y ago
        Yep. If these same fishermen will break into your country and then break into your house, it will be a bit late to enforce law. Dozens of wars we know started this way.
    - 6y ago
anxtyinmgmt 6y ago
Reminds me of canaries and coal mines
jcun4128 6y ago
Curious of the tech specifics eg. using Iridium sat or something for communication, I think article just said "trackers". Though I see she's wearing a backpack so maybe it was just a brief test/not far/long duration.
- Exmoor 6y ago
  The article seemed pretty devoid of technical details and left me curious as well. That said, this sentence might give us some insight: "The loggers took years to perfect and I can still remember the excitement of getting the first one back that had successfully detected a boat’s radar." "Getting the first one back" makes me think that they physically had to retrieve the sensor, rather than have data transmitted. I am aware of two kinds of trackers deployed on birds. The first can note their location via GPS at regular intervals and send that data to cell towers when in range. I've only heard about these being deployed on larger birds such as Peregrine Falcons [0] or Snowy Owls [1]. The second type uses daylight to gather location data. If you know when the sun rose and set, relative to UTC, you can pinpoint your location to within ~100 miles. Trackers using this technology can be much smaller, but the bird has to be recaptured for data to be retrieved. Trackers like this were used within the last decade to finally uncover the location where Black Swifts who breed in the United States spent their winter. These small birds flew all the way to Brazil and returned the next summer to the exact same nesting location they used in prior years. Similar trackers, which also had accelerometers, were used to prove the Common Swifts sometimes fly non-stop all winter, sleeping while they fly. Given the text I quoted and the fact that albatrosses rarely come near any sort of radio receiver, I suspect the trackers must be retrieved from birds, likely on the breeding grounds, which would make the lag monumental. Perhaps it's possible that they're able to do some sort of satellite transmission, but that would seem very challenging indeed. [0] https://madisonaudubon.org/fff/2016/10/25/featured-sanctuary-bird-peregrine-falcon https://madisonaudubon.org/fff/2016/10/25/featured-sanctuary... (The main site appears to be down) [1] https://www.projectsnowstorm.org/ https://www.projectsnowstorm.org/
  - jcun4128 6y ago
    Wow that's interesting the sunrise/sunset sensor, never considered/heard about that. I've read about the "sleeping while flying" thing that seems crazy, I guess if they're high enough/how long is the sleep. Thanks for the thoughtful response
stormdennis 6y ago
24 puffins isn't that heavy. I think I weigh about 180 puffins.
- mnw21cam 6y ago
  It isn't exactly an SI unit of measurement, is it?
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    Must be imperial. If hogshead can be a unit of measure, why not puffin?
everybodyknows 6y ago
Previous coverage: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=albatrosses%20illegal&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=albatrosses%20pirates&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

86 points by lelf 6y ago

And a good south wind sprung up behind; The Albatross did follow, And every day, for food or play, Came to the mariner's hollo! In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, It perched for vespers nine; Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, Glimmered the white Moon-shine.' 'God save thee, ancient Mariner! From the fiends, that plague thee thus!— Why look'st thou so?'—With my cross-bow I shot the ALBATROSS.

dreamcompiler 6y ago
Had to memorize this in grade school. I'll never be able to appreciate it properly because of that trauma.
- frabert 6y ago
  I absolutely despised having to memorize passages in school. To this day, I can't find a single way that has helped me.

ISL 6y ago

Sounds awesome -- hopefully there isn't an unintended consequence of encouraging illegal fishers to shoot down albatrosses. When you're already breaking some ethics/rules, it is much easier to break one more.

toss1 6y ago
Sounds like this would be a good job for a indefinite-flight-time solar-powered drone, flying up higher to get a broader view and stay out of range. The albatrosses already told us where to fly, now we need to put up some tech to catch the poachers. If they got reliably caught, fined, boats seized, few would bother.
- jcun4128 6y ago
  side note: the star link satellites probably don't have cameras right... otherwise there's your constant eye in the sky with high res as opposed to the geosync ones train ML on normal fishing routes/paths to take, deviation, detects unexpected ships ooh
  - _underfl0w_ 6y ago
    Sounds fun until it's quietly applied at a nation state level to e.g. cars or foot traffic or similar. Once it's proven to "stop crime on the high seas" it would be easier to get further funding. AFAIUI the images wouldn't be able to be delivered fast enough for anything approaching realtime, but I haven't looked into their specs to know if they even have cameras either (plus isn't transmission speed a differentiating factor for them?). To make it worse, a tinfoil hat would just make you easier to spot on camera haha...
    - jcun4128 6y ago
      I was doubtful they would have cameras just because of payload/purpose "circuitry" but it also seems like a small thing to slap on there/extra sensor to get data. What a cool platform though, I had a fantasy like ssh'ing into a satellite and it's flying through the sky.
      - toss1 6y ago
        Well, you are in luck!! The US Air Force AFWERX [1] Challenge is the combination of the defense, academic, startup, private sector and small business worlds to collaborate through challenges and live events, is running a Hack-A-Sat event [2] -- see if you can join! [1]https://www.afwerx.af.mil https://www.afwerx.af.mil [2] https://www.hackasat.com/?utm_campaign=AFWERX%20Fusion%202020&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=92783532&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--MnXQvAQsBsNvtozX-HbCRbNryMFksDftLj2M00PwzY4t56ATs6pOe2n669ViBficGZAGo5isyyw17e181__pzIHl00PXgv_oZu5SbqB4LYz0U_MY&utm_content=92783532 https://www.hackasat.com/?utm_campaign=AFWERX%20Fusion%20202...
mc32 6y ago
Apparently it’s not just “pirates“[1]There are state sponsored illegal fishing in the eastern & South Pacific by the usual suspects. [1] https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/30-03-2016/how-chinas-illegal-fishing-armada-is-plundering-the-south-pacific/ https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/30-03-2016/how-chinas-illeg...
- ngcc_hk 6y ago
  Suspect it is china after the current Galapagos island operation. It turned out it is. Since ancient time ba ...
  - EdwardDiego 6y ago
    The Spanish, South Koreans and Taiwanese are masters of illegal fishing also, especially for Patagonian toothfish. But then the illegal fishing in Somali waters (that contributed significantly to the issues of piracy) was a veritable united nations... https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2019.00704/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2019.0070...
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      >Patagonian toothfish. aka "Chilean sea bass" so that upper middle class westerners think it's a striper and don't bother to Google it.
      - mc32 6y ago
        Lots of fish get friendlier marketing names (all the Cods and Basses) Chilean sea bass predates googling.
        throwaway0a5e 6y ago
        Most fish are marketed under their own name. Halibut, Cod, Flounder, Albacore, Smelt, Sardines, Anchovies, etc. You don't usually have trade names until you start getting into fish that weren't commonly fished for Western consumption until refrigeration plus depletion of fisheries made it possible and profitable to fish things half way around the world or fishing or fish some secondary species that was formerly considered by-catch. At least that's my observation. I've never done a comprehensive survey.
jgeada 6y ago
Illegal fishing should be treated as an act of war against the human race. Illegal fishing boats should just be sunk.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars were mostly net cutting and shouldering.
- dTal 6y ago
  The verve with which you enforce lethal consequences on people who break the rules to survive, must be equally matched with a verve for helping those in need. Many of these people aren't illegally fishing for pleasure.
  - brutt 6y ago
    Why you have locked doors in your house? Maybe it better to help those who are looking for shelter or food instead of spending money on doors, locks, security cams, police, courts, jails, borders, army.
    - Jabbles 6y ago
      The parent said "equally matched", not "instead of".
    - rfrey 6y ago
      You equate locking my door at night with killing subsistence fishermen who are breaking fishing laws to survive?
      - brutt 6y ago
        Yep. If these same fishermen will break into your country and then break into your house, it will be a bit late to enforce law. Dozens of wars we know started this way.
  - 6y ago

anxtyinmgmt 6y ago

Reminds me of canaries and coal mines

jcun4128 6y ago

Curious of the tech specifics eg. using Iridium sat or something for communication, I think article just said "trackers". Though I see she's wearing a backpack so maybe it was just a brief test/not far/long duration.

Exmoor 6y ago
The article seemed pretty devoid of technical details and left me curious as well. That said, this sentence might give us some insight: "The loggers took years to perfect and I can still remember the excitement of getting the first one back that had successfully detected a boat’s radar." "Getting the first one back" makes me think that they physically had to retrieve the sensor, rather than have data transmitted. I am aware of two kinds of trackers deployed on birds. The first can note their location via GPS at regular intervals and send that data to cell towers when in range. I've only heard about these being deployed on larger birds such as Peregrine Falcons [0] or Snowy Owls [1]. The second type uses daylight to gather location data. If you know when the sun rose and set, relative to UTC, you can pinpoint your location to within ~100 miles. Trackers using this technology can be much smaller, but the bird has to be recaptured for data to be retrieved. Trackers like this were used within the last decade to finally uncover the location where Black Swifts who breed in the United States spent their winter. These small birds flew all the way to Brazil and returned the next summer to the exact same nesting location they used in prior years. Similar trackers, which also had accelerometers, were used to prove the Common Swifts sometimes fly non-stop all winter, sleeping while they fly. Given the text I quoted and the fact that albatrosses rarely come near any sort of radio receiver, I suspect the trackers must be retrieved from birds, likely on the breeding grounds, which would make the lag monumental. Perhaps it's possible that they're able to do some sort of satellite transmission, but that would seem very challenging indeed. [0] https://madisonaudubon.org/fff/2016/10/25/featured-sanctuary-bird-peregrine-falcon https://madisonaudubon.org/fff/2016/10/25/featured-sanctuary... (The main site appears to be down) [1] https://www.projectsnowstorm.org/ https://www.projectsnowstorm.org/
- jcun4128 6y ago
  Wow that's interesting the sunrise/sunset sensor, never considered/heard about that. I've read about the "sleeping while flying" thing that seems crazy, I guess if they're high enough/how long is the sleep. Thanks for the thoughtful response

stormdennis 6y ago

24 puffins isn't that heavy. I think I weigh about 180 puffins.

mnw21cam 6y ago
It isn't exactly an SI unit of measurement, is it?
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  Must be imperial. If hogshead can be a unit of measure, why not puffin?

everybodyknows 6y ago

Previous coverage: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=albatrosses%20illegal&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=albatrosses%20pirates&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...