A growing number of drone photos are helping us gain new knowledge about the dark depths of the ocean and encounters with sharks that are closer than we can imagine.
Fifty-year-old Joanna Steddle smiled as she flew a drone over the Atlantic Ocean on a foggy July morning.
She was looking for sharks.
Steedle was born in Southampton, in the US state of New York.
She grew up on the beach always longing to know what creatures lived beneath the surface.
Everything changed when she picked up a drone in 2015.
Since then, he has filmed humpback whales surging from the depths to swallow their prey with their huge jaws and schools of ghost rays swimming in formation.
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For filming, Stidl uses a drone that can rise to about 122 meters and fly close to the surface of the water.
The amazing photos she took even attracted the attention of the National Geography magazine.
Sharks are the most exciting, she says.
Several of her videos show these fearsome predators chasing schools of fish, like sea wolves (Atlantic catfish).
"The way they move and interact with the species around them is amazing," she said.
"It's like they're sharing a big buffet."
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In the past few years, ordinary people, photographers, some scientists and even law enforcement agencies have been using drones to study and monitor sharks, allowing us to see previously unseen footage of one of the world's most notorious predators and one of the biggest predators we know the least about. .
Thanks to drones, we can see stunning aerial shots of great white sharks munching on the carcass of a humpback whale, or calmly swimming a foot away from surfers.
But drones also show us dangers from the water, which has fueled thoughts about how they could be used to protect swimmers from increasingly frequent encounters with sharks.
New normality
About a dozen species of sharks swim off the coast of Long Island in the US state of New York, including sand tiger sharks and sand sharks, and small white sharks have also been spotted.
People are not on their menu.
But this summer, some sharks are swimming too close to shore.
Due to climate change, the temperature of the waters around Long Island has increased, making it more hospitable for sharks.
The new laws prohibit overfishing of Atlantic herring, which are the primary food of sharks.
This means that an increasing number of sharks are coming closer to the coast to feed on Atlantic herring, which are now abundant, and it is possible that they may accidentally bite people who are in their way.
Shark bites are very rare.
Prema World record shark bite, in the federal state of New York in 2022, only eight unprovoked shark bites were recorded, none of which were fatal.
But, in just one weekend in early July, there were at least four shark encounters in Long Island waters.
In one such encounter, fifteen-year-old surfer Peter Bankuli suffered an injury, believed to be from a shark bite, near Fire Island. (He said in a statement to a local media house that he would soon be ready to "cut the waves again").
After these events, the governor of the state of New York, Kathy Hokul, ordered that drones be used to monitor sharks and, when they approach the shore, that swimmers should be ordered to get out of the water.
However, some experts believe that drones are not particularly effective for tracking sharks, as they can only record them when they are swimming close to the surface.
Drone footage can also instill fear in the kind of sharks people have been swimming with for years, says Frank Quevedo, executive director of the South Fork Museum of Natural History on Long Island.
"Today, anyone who sees a shark captures it and can post those shots and photos on social media that are viewed by millions of people," he said.
"That's how people demonize sharks, saying 'Oh, they're in our waters, they're going to eat people.'"
This summer, drones caused unnecessary fear on the beach at least once.
Earlier in July, a man raised a drone and saw a school of large fish that he thought were 50 sharks, closing Robert Mozis Beach.
"It caused panic," Quevedo said.
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An infestation of drone photos
People still think of sharks as big man-eaters and that's because of blockbusters Shark (Jaws) from 1975, in which a great white shark butchered swimmers off the coast of the US Federal Reserve in Massachusetts.
For several decades, scientists have been doing research and offering explanations to change people's attitudes toward sharks and stop hunting to extinction, especially great whites, Quevedo said.
Some amateurs who use a drone believe that footage of sharks that live peacefully with us would help in the fight against such misconceptions.
Carlos Gauna, who flies a drone over the Malibu coast in California as a hobby, has taken countless shots of small white sharks swimming a foot away from surfers and not touching them at all.
He uploads those recordings to the YouTube channel Artist from Malibu, to show viewers sharks from a different angle.
"People believe that sharks are aggressive and that they are eternally hungry monsters," Gauna told the BBC.
"When you see sharks in the wild, you do a 180-degree turn," he said.
"And they're actually just chilling."
John Dodd, founder of the Atlantic Shark Institute, believes that drones are useful for studying these animals.
"The drone doesn't cause the sharks to change their movements, so you can study what they're really doing in the natural environment," he said.
In the Hamptons, which is about 4.800 miles from California, Quevedo and his colleagues use drones to protect sharks.
They attach tracking devices to the sharks to collect data, such as size, gender and oxygen levels.
Kevedo believes that instead of drone footage of sharks being used to make people afraid of the water, they should actually show people how their sharp-toothed neighbors live.
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Already this week, visitors to Coopers Beach in the Hamptons have seen drones flown by police.
Southampton resident Susan Moore said drones make her feel safer.
"The police follow them and then they inform us," said the sixty-nine-year-old woman, who was swimming with friends.
"If the police see a shark with a drone, they will not allow anyone to enter the water," added her friend, XNUMX-year-old Jen Cerato.
Visitors to the beach say that the increased presence of drones has not instilled in them any additional fear of sharks.
Stedley, who photographs sharks, criticized the use of drones for spreading misconceptions about sharks.
She told the BBC that she filmed these animals very close to the coast of the Hamptons.
One of her videos shows 13 sharks, among which was a small white shark, which was swimming only thirty meters from the beach.
Stedley has never seen a single shark attack a human.
The drone helps her discover the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean and the beauty of the sharks and other sea creatures that live in it.
"We are not alone here," she said.
"We share this space".
Viewing the sharks from a drone "reminds me how tiny I am," she adds.
"I'm just a grain of sand on this big planet".
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