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Google Funds A Starfish-Killing Robot To Save Australia's Great Barrier Reef (abc.net.au)
"It looks like a tiny yellow submarine, but this underwater drone is on a mission to kill," reports ABC. Specifically, to kill the starfish that are destroying coral on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. An anonymous reader quotes ABC:
In a bid to eradicate the pest, Queensland researchers have developed world-first robots to administer a lethal injection to the starfish using new technology... Researcher Matt Dunbabin said the technology was 99.4 per cent accurate in delivering a toxic substance only harmful to the starfish.... Divers have played a big role in helping to combat the starfish, but Professor Dunbabin said the robot would take the efforts to the next level. "Divers currently control certain areas, but there are not enough divers to actually make a difference on the scale of the reef," he said. The drone can also monitor and gather huge amounts of data about coral bleaching, water quality and pollution.
"RangerBot will be designed to stay underwater almost three times longer than a human diver, gather vastly more data, map expansive underwater areas at scales not previously possible, and operate in all conditions and all times of the day or night," according to Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology.
The starfish-killing robots were partially funded by Google (through their Google.org Impact Challenge program to fund and support nonprofit innovators), reports The Drive. One study had found the reef's coral cover declined 50% between 1985 and 2012, "with nearly half of that drop resulting from the coral-destroying starfish species."
"RangerBot will be designed to stay underwater almost three times longer than a human diver, gather vastly more data, map expansive underwater areas at scales not previously possible, and operate in all conditions and all times of the day or night," according to Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology.
The starfish-killing robots were partially funded by Google (through their Google.org Impact Challenge program to fund and support nonprofit innovators), reports The Drive. One study had found the reef's coral cover declined 50% between 1985 and 2012, "with nearly half of that drop resulting from the coral-destroying starfish species."
This particular starfish species is an invasive pest in Australia.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I thought, Google employees were very much against this sort of thing. And Electronic Frontier Foundation disapproves too.
Or is it only bad, when American military works on it?
Yeah, sure "fish aren't humans" — will the robot (particularly, the software) require much rework to begin killing, say, enemy divers?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Humans are fucking up the environment, that is why the coral reefs are in danger. In the face of what humanity is doing on a global scale, nature can't take care of itself.
I don't know whether killing the starfish truly is necessary, but I suspect corals are ecologically more valuable than the starfish.
so are most Australians
This particular starfish species is an invasive pest in Australia.
Whereas the robots are a natural part of the ecosystem?
But I get what you're saying. We know what we're doing - it's not like the old days when we were arrogant about these things. There is no chance of the robots affecting other life in the oceans. There is no chance of them damaging the coral. Nothing can go wrong.
oblig XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1656/
Do something = something might go wrong.
Do nothing = something will go wrong.
wrong
Seriously, Is it too much to ask that slashdotters keep up with the professional literature?
I hope we see more robots like this, to weed out Africanized honeybees from native bees (a small but loud propellor might do the trick), the invasive albizia trees in Kauai, the brown tree snake in Guam, etc. Also for forest management across North America, by strategically clearing out some of the younger trees in order to keep wildfire temperatures low and give the older trees a better chance to survive.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
But instead of starfish and coral it's terrorists and borders.
Would it not make more sense to catch them and make food from them?
Worst case cat food or dog food?
In some countries it is common to eat them: http://www.chinesestreetfood.c...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You must be new <looks at parent UID> errrr, <head asplodes> must not come here very often.
That study puts starfish as cause of 42% of coral losses per year. Seriously?
Reef has been there for hundreds, more likely thousands of years. Same for the starfish. Personal hypothesis: environmental conditions change (for example, sea water acidity), coral weakens as a result, and starfish take advantage of the situation.
Cause of death of the coral? Yes. Cause of the problem in the overall scheme of things? Hell no - external factors. It's those external factors we should be looking at. Not those starfish that do what they do once conditions are favourable.
Your'e a marine biologist, right?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Well, we let them do it though.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Fortunately we already have drones capable of killing Australians. Starfish-killing drones are new.
Ezekiel 23:20
Two major precipitating factors are nutrient runoff from Indonesian sugarcane farms, and global warming; both of which won't be solved any time soon, without a lot of international cooperation. This method is fairly unilateral,
Some states and canada are releasing wasps to kill ash borers. The ash borers are an invasive tree-killing species.
Wikipedia seems to be a little outdated, as they have not spotted the bugs in the PNW, and wasp are being used.
https://dnrtreelink.wordpress....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Lots of bad critters are being fought all over with interesting solutions.
It's about time they did something about those fucking starfish. I never knew there was a problem.
Why the hell am I reading your comment?
This is all being done in the name of "save the reef!!!!!!" when nature can fucking take care of itself without needlessly killing shit.
You must be new to this planet. The primary way that nature "takes care of itself" is by needlessly killing a fucktonne of shit.
Next up (I hope), mosquitoes.
See, he comes from a time when the expectation here was that people did more than 1) read the title, 2) read the summary, 3) RTFA. All of which seem to be optional these days.
GENERATION 27: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Please click all the pictures with starfish on them until there are none left and then click OK.
Apple Funds a Robot-Killing Robot to Save Australia's Starfish. Details at 10:00.
Well, we let them do it though.
I didn't. I protested vigorously, but being only six months old, my angered cries were misinterpreted.
I worked for many years in the control of vector-borne diseases. There has never been a successful case of mosquito eradication from a region. Never.
In fact pursing the goal of eradication actually makes it harder to limit human exposure harder in the long term. The reason is that to eradicate a mosquito population, you'd have to saturate the entire region with lethal doses of pesticide, which is physically and economically impossible.
Attempting total eradication only creates evolutionary pressure on the population to develop pesticide resistance and greater fecundity.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Asking whether the coral is more "ecologically valuable" than the starfish is premature, because we don't really understand the ecological relationship between the starfish and the reef. It is possible that the reef as we know it might not even be possible without starfish predation.
The crown-of-thorns starfish not some exotic species, it evolved with the corals it preys upon. Had humans never evolved, it would still be killing off sections of coral reef, only there wouldn't be anyone around to be upset at the pictures.
Now there are two possible justifications for humans intervening in the starfish/reef interaction. The first is if prior human actions artificially inflate the predator starfish population. The second is if prior human actions artificially weaken the prey coral population. In both those cases the sensible and indeed only feasible solution is to stop doing whatever it is we've been doing that creates the problem.
You can't eradicate an animal which lays twenty million viable eggs at a time by killing individuals, even on a massive scale. The very next year an area you to all visible appearances swept clean will be covered again. What you have to do is tweak the factors that alter the survival rate of those twenty million eggs.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
How about sugarcane elimination robots, then? They can look like salt shakers and cry 'EX-TER-MI-NATE!' as they do their job.
Salt shakers vs. sugar, who will win?!
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Humans are fucking up the environment
Yes, but the pertinent question is whether releasing starfish killing robots is going to be another example of this. Our attempts to fix environmental damage in the past by releasing new organisms to try and kill off some other organism that has got out of control have not exactly been a roaring success. Are we going to kill off the starfish only to find that the reason for their large numbers is that they are eating some other organism that is even more damaging to the reef? Past performance suggests this is certainly possible.
Do you understand that your statement is literally anti-evolutionary? Everything on this planet "have not been there before" on long enough time scale, because that's how evolution works.
And as far as scientific language works, these are species native to the region.
Invasive introduced (likely by ship bilges) species that's doing a monster truck load of damage
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
They are a pest to commercial fisheries, who fished out all the starfish predators, and whose members in the past would bisect the starfish and return the remains overboard, not realizing they created another starfish and possibly a population explosion. Crown-of-thorns role in reef ecology is not entirely understood, but one known role is crown-of-thorns prevents fast-growing coral from overpowering the slower growing coral varieties. This species is not invasive, but native to the GBR.
It's actually a biological fact, without mosquitos some things wouldn't happen
Yea, I wouldn't get bitten by fucking mosquitoes for one.
This is what the ecologists are up to nowadays, building robots to kill wildlife?
Trying to maintain balance in the wildlife that humans have fucked up has been what ecologists have been up to since the beginning. The only difference is earlier on they were making things progressively worse not better.
Local effects and local pollution are causing the issues, not some massively complex "climate change".
Yes one would assume that if they don't know what they are talking about. Back in reality the starfish are only partially the cause of the great barrier reef death, and the population boom of those starfish are caused by .... climate change.
Ultimately though the root cause of all of this is that the world is full of idiots such as yourself.
The reef has not been around that long and has been routinely destroyed, quite a few times. The reef as we know it now was a coastal formation, well above sea level, for over twenty thousand years, before it was submerged around ten thousand year ago and started to regrow. It does have predators and will move away from a zone where to detects them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... In fact it is likely the lack of these that is causing the problem, because pretty shell and are more edible than their prey.
Google is simply indulging in an act of marketing, success or failure they don't care, they have been carrying on like a pack of shits and need to pretend to do some good deeds for advertising purposes. Especially invading everyone's privacy through master card, which you would think should be illegal. Financial institutions selling information about you financial transactions, especially say medical fees. Corrupt as fuck, truly disgusting.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
"where are the robot girlfriends we were promised?"
Well, you had to ask didn't you.
<URL:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff_NRSf4s20&ab_channel=Engadget/>
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
Oh, really?
Better tell the CSIRO they are imagining this then.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/201...
A population *crash* isn't tantamount to eradication.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
with starfish and ends with humanity!
It's actually a biological fact, without mosquitos some things wouldn't happen and you haven't predicted what that is.
No animal on earth gets the majority of its food intake from mosquitoes. Whatever wouldn't happen is almost certainly minor.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Can you please link to your peer reviewed study?
Otherwise STFU and let the adults talk.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
The spike in crown of thorns starfish numbers is largely related to warming waters and increased sediment runoff from farms. Good luck fixing either of those quickly.
The planet is going to be fine. Humans? Huge swathes of species currently in existence? Dunno...