It was a beautifully serene night in April when Roy Sasano, then a drone pilot with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, caught sight of the men in the boat. That is, his drone saw the men. Sasano’s vessel, the Farley Mowat, was a mile away.
He and his crewmates were patrolling a marine reserve in the northern reaches of the Gulf of California, trying to prevent poaching of a large fish called totoaba, and the incidental killing of a small, blunt-nosed porpoise called vaquita — little cow. Both animals are endangered and illegal to fish. But in China, the totoaba’s swim bladder is thought to have medicinal powers. It sells there for nearly $5,000 per pound. Poachers can’t resist. And while fishing for totoaba, they accidentally catch the porpoises as well. Perhaps 60 vaquita remain in existence.
Sasano was fresh from the Royal Canadian navy, where he specialized in IT, one reason Sea Shepherd brought him on. The moon was unusually bright on this April night, the sea calm and the air a comfortable 70 degrees. When he spotted the launch, he assumed it was the Mexican navy, which was also patrolling the reserve. So he approached aggressively, without the quiet-flying techniques that might prevent the drone’s detection. And when he saw that the men were putting a net in the water, it was too late. They heard the buzzing of the quadcopter, dropped what they were doing, and sped off.
Read the story at Backchannel
