Overwhelmed with thousands of turtles swimming ashore nesting eggs

The image of thousands of green turtles gathered at the edge of Australia's Great Barrier Reef during breeding season creates an interesting scene.

Scientists from the Queensland Department of Science and Environment used a drone to record this image on Raine Island, a coral vegetation about 620km from the city of Cairns, Queensland, Australia northwest.

According to statistics, every year, about 200,000 individuals of green turtles move to Raine Island to nest. However, due to floods and the harsh terrain of this island, turtles do not reproduce as expected.

A scene of thousands of turtles swimming at the shore to nest. (Photo: CNN)

Many mother turtles fall to the cliffs, trapped by the heat and have difficulty when floods flood water into their nests.

In a study conducted in December, scientists discovered that using drones is the most accurate way to record the number of endangered turtles instead of the method of spraying paint on the back of a turtle. traditional.

"Using drones is easier, safer, more accurate and data can be stored immediately and permanently , " said Andrew Dunstan from the Queensland Agency for Science and Environment.

Thanks to the drone, the team found up to 64,000 turtles swimming around the island waiting to land to lay eggs. This made Dunstan and his colleagues quite surprised because this number is 1.73 times higher than the number that they statistics before.

Dunstan and his team hope that in the future they can automate the counting of turtles using the drone method using artificial intelligence.