Drone Catches Video of Dolphin Pod and Humpback Whales

[bradl]

So far, Best use of a drone ever. Absolutely beautiful footage, and seeing the mother and calf whales migrating together.. Makes all other personal issues someone has seem feeble.

I'll let NPR set up the story:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way...tches-video-of-stampeding-dolphins-whale-calf

WATCH: Drone Catches Video Of Stampeding Dolphins, Whale Calf
By Scott Neuman
March 4, 2014 2:35pm

Dave Anderson, who runs whale-watching charters out of Dana Point, Calif., used a small camera-equipped drone to capture video of a "mega-pod" of hundreds of common dolphins as well as three gray whale migrating off the coast of San Clemente. In a separate sortie, the drone returned footage of a family of humpback whales off of Maui.

Anderson, who runs Capt. Dave's Dolphin and Whale Safari produced the footage into this stunning five-minute video.

According to AOL Travel:

"He filmed off a small inflatable boat, launching and catching the quadcopter drone by hand, risking injury from the four propeller blades or loss of the drone."

"He actually lost one drone in January on takeoff when it nicked his small VHF radio antenna on the 14-foot rigid inflatable he was filming from and it went into the water."

Enjoy.

BL.

 

[Jessica Lares]

WOW. Beautiful. Agree, that is an awesome use of the technology.

 

[CrickettGrrrl]

Thank you for posting this, really needed to see something beautiful right now.

 

[ucfgrad93]

Wow, that was pretty amazing.

 

[rdowns]

Great video. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Capt T]

Thanks for sharing, very cool.

 

[rhett7660]

Like others have said,,, this is pretty kick ass!!!! Thank you for sharing. The pod of dolphins was awesome....

Great video!

 

[24hrpizza]

pure awesomeness

 

[andiwm2003]

wow. beautiful.

if Ahab had one of those drones the book would have been so much shorter.....

 

[snberk103]

We had a super-pod of pacific whitesided dolphins in the waters around here last year. Several of my friends saw it from a BC Ferry - and they were gob-smacked. I got to see it (at a distance) in the Discovery Passage off Campbell River. It is an unbelievable thing to see in person. What totally floored was the sheer size of the pod... I could see it in front of Quadra Island, and so got a sense of the scale. It was about 5km long (about 3 miles). That's 5km of a solid mass of dolphins spouting and leaping and doing dolphin things. I don't know if somebody managed to get a drone over it ... but I'd like to think so.