Bertarelli-Annual-Report-2024-FULL - Flipbook - Page 32
Bertarelli Foundation
Melissa Schiele
Holly Stokes
PhD student at Loughborough University and
PhD student at Swansea University
Zoological Society of London’s Institute of Zoology
“Developing
unmanned aerial vehicle
(UAV) [or any] systems for
deployment in the Global South
must be partnered with robust
technology adoption and acceptance
models. This hasn’t been done in
marine conservation yet. We
can learn a lot from the
engineering field.”
“The Chagos
Archipelago supports all
life stages of turtles and provides
a great opportunity to study
juveniles, an understudied life stage,
at shallow foraging sites. Our research
at Turtle Cove in Diego Garcia
showed the highest densities of
juvenile hawksbill turtles in
the world.”
Melissa’s PhD research was multi and interdisciplinary,
based in the engineering department at Loughborough
University, and incorporated marine conservation, illegal
fisheries and plastics detection. Melissa developed a low
cost, easily maintainable, multiuse water-landing UAV
which was trialled in Belize, the Maldives and extensively
in the Chagos Archipelago. Her research focussed on
finding practical solutions to governance and monitoring
problems in MPAs by using unique drones and remote
sensing technology. Melissa worked with the Marine
Management Organisation and ZSL to investigate how
innovative technology can support compliance and
enforcement of MPAs around the UK Overseas Territories,
particularly in relation to surveillance and prevention of
illegal fishing.
Holly’s PhD research focussed on sea turtle ecology
in the Chagos Archipelago, examining the impacts
of predation, temperature, and nest site selection
on green turtle reproductive success. She also
explored using remote and in situ sensing techniques,
such as satellite tracking, UAV and camera trap
surveys, validating these methods against traditional
approaches like foot patrols and in-water captures to
assess nesting and foraging populations of green and
hawksbill turtles.
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