Dr. Costa and her team were working on the Dolphins of the Kelp project focused on two species, Commerson’s and Peale’s dolphins that are present year-round in the coastal waters off the Falkland Islands. One of their studies required boat surveys on board a small rigid hull inflatable boat (RHIB) that is agile enough to navigate around fast dolphins swimming in shallow and quite rough waters!
Could you please describe to us in detail in which way your PELI case saved your devices? What were the exact circumstances?
My team works with 15,000£ of equipment including cameras, drone and several tools for sampling animal tissues and water. Once we were out at sea, collecting dolphin photo-identification data with our cameras, and a drone to collect diving time. The sea was calm flat but the drone was warning us of the presence of strong wind. We decided to call back the drone and… made it just in time! In 40 seconds we were run over by a strong wind and one minute later the waves arrived; we had just the time to put the equipment in our 1560 PELI case and fix it to the boat.
To go back to the harbor we needed to cross Mengeary Point where the waves come straight from the Antarctic Convergence Current and… are massive! The wind was so strong that we had to give maximum power to move forward and the boat was ‘flying’ between one crest to another, full of water. When we finally arrived to shelter we checked the equipment.
We were not sure if it survived the big shocks and being underwater… To our joy everything was fine and working perfectly: no damage to the lenses, no damage to the drone gimbal clamp. Not one drop of water inside… we were the only ones a little battered!
Go Marina. Go PELI.