TurtleSense Disguises a Sensor Package as a Loggerhead Egg
You have undoubtedly seen the videos of adorable baby turtles making their first trek to the ocean. This is one of the most treacherous times in the life for an already endangered species.
Researchers hid an accelerometer in a fake turtle egg [a pingpong ball] to send data via SMS. With this data people will be able to understand more about the nesting/hatching process and deploy effective protection for the turtles.
“It’s absolutely magical to witness baby turtles poke their heads out of the sand and sprint towards the ocean, but it’s an event that can be very hard to predict,” Erin Clabough, co-lead researcher on the project, explains. “The TurtleSense system is a low-cost, creative solution that remotely allows us to detect how baby turtles synchronize developmental movement within the nest in real time. We can use the system to detect hatching and to better predict when the hatchlings will emerge onto the beach.”
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