Eric Lawrey @ericlawrey@qoto.org

Drone mosaic fail.

I tried making a quick mosaic by flying the #drone in a short single row, not the usual back and forth pattern. The images merged ok but ended up rotated 90 degrees and bowed.☹️
A line doesn’t indicate the orientation of the images and lens distortion resulted in the bow.

(Reef off Balgal beach, Queensland)

One of the challenges of making good #maps is choosing colours that work well for those with colour deficiency. To help I use a simulator on my phone.

I tried it out at the grocery store and was surprised by how everything looked yellow.

These photos are for severe red green blindness (#protanopia).

I was trying to fly my #drone to reef edge of Green Island on the #GBR to get a view of the #coral patches, but the reef flat is very wide. I had to carefully walk over the reef flat at low tide, towards the edge, to launch the drone close enough to maintain visual line of sight. This meant hand launching and landing the drone while standing in shallow water. A bit nerve wracking given that it was quite windy. I only just made it to the edge before I reached the visible limit.

Beach rock forms around the edges of coral cays, helping to stabilise them.

Literature suggest that it can form quickly, within a few years. I was excited to find patches of seemingly partly formed beach rock on Green Island, QLD, Australia.

Now I have a reason to go back, to check if it really forms new rock in a few years. The snorkelling and the beautiful tropical island is good too.

This is above Alma Bay Magnetic Island. I love my drone. There is some hard coral along the rocks, but not enough to form a coral reef.