Mexican-born marine researcher Oscar Frey was only 7 years old the first time he saw a whale. He was on the water off the coast of Washington state – in a canoe. “That first whale impression is a big imprint,” he told PV Pulse in a recent interview. “Whale watching didn’t even exist then. It was the 70s.”
But for Oscar, the whale watching never stopped. His interest in the natural world – and in marine sciences, specifically – only intensified as he grew older.
“When I was 12 my big idols were [science writer Isaac] Asimov, [scientist and writer Carl] Sagan, and [ocean explorer] Jacques Cousteau, of course. Sagan could put into words what I was living in regard to the perception of the world …”. Frey becomes animated, leaning forward in his chair when he speaks about his heroes. “His observations of the living cosmos - observing the planet as one huge organism... That’s what took me to the faculty of Marine Sciences.”
The University of Baja California in Ensenada is a renowned research facility. It hosts the highest number of science researchers per capita in all of Latin America. While studying there, Oscar participated in the Paleontological Research Program which was sponsored by the National Geographic Society, and completed specialized coursework in adventure travel and eco-tourism.
In addition to earning his Bachelor´s degree in Oceanology, Oscar’s time in Baja gave him a first-class education in the complex diversity of our planet. “Baja is a different Mexico,” Oscar explains. “It’s the land of contrasts – desert, productive ocean...”
After graduation, Oscar moved back to Puerto Vallarta, located on a portion of the 80-kilometre coastline surrounding the Bahia de Banderas, Mexico’s largest natural bay and an important breeding ground for humpback whales. His primary interest was research into the impact of humans on whales, with the purpose of enhancing conservation efforts.
Today, Oscar owns a busy eco-friendly whale-watching company, Ocean Friendly Tours, which finances and provides data for his primary passion: ocean conservation.
“Humpback whales are the ones most impacted by human activities so that’s why we study them,” Oscar explains. “We can compare the work in Baja California, which looks at the human impact on grey whales in a semi-enclosed area, and compare the whale watching activities in Banderas Bay, using humpbacks in semi-open areas.”
But while few would argue that this is worthy work, there’s always the issue of financing. “I saw the only way to do the research was to do the tours,” Oscar confirms. “The tours finance the studies, and the studies provide information for conservation efforts and strategies.”
Oscar’s Humpback Whale Research Program includes a Whale Identification Catalogue which contains documentation of nearly 1,000 individual whales. In addition, he’s building a body of acoustic data – analog and digital recordings of whale song – that provides researchers with valuable mating information, as well as insight into the ways in which the sounds of boats affect whale behaviour.
“I’m trying to study the natural behaviour of the whales, yet to study it I have to be on a boat and the boat itself creates a certain amount of impact,” Oscar explains. “To study that impact you need an external perspective. I am trying to document myself. In other words, how are the whales responding to my boat’s manoeuvres? I can’t see that from a hand-held camera. I need an external perspective. A non-invasive one.”
A casual remark would resolve that vital research question and lead to a new documentation technique and a whole host of new research possibilities.
“About 9 years ago, I was out on the water and there were leisure boats, yachts, following some whales I was observing. They were getting too close to the whales, so I called out that they should back off. One of the guys on the boat yelled back that I should go fly a kite. It got me thinking, because I’d heard of KAP. It was meant to be.” Oscar leans back in his chair with a self-satisfied smile, eyebrows raised as if to say, “See?” It takes me a few minutes.
KAP is kite aerial photography, a method developed in the late 1880s in France, which uses a camera rigged to a kite to take pictures from places and angles not otherwise possible. In the intervening century-plus since the first KAP photos were taken, not much has changed in the technique: a kite is flown and a camera (or sometimes two) is attached to a rigging on the line.
What has changed is the technology. In early KAP systems, the shutter was triggered by a timed burning wick, like you’d find on a firecracker. Cameras, of course, have also come a long way. “Cost depends on the rig,” Oscar says, “but you could easily have a system worth about six to seven thousand dollars.”
Oscar pulls up a presentation on his laptop to give me a visual for what we’re discussing. He clicks forward to a slide showing a remote control much like you’d see in a Hot Wheels set. “Yes, it’s the same technology,” he confirms. “Of course, we’ve customized it.”
The KAP images are startling: expansive, unusual, and beautiful. “You can see how far we are from the whale in this one.” Oscar’s pointing to a speck at the edge of the frame. Hundreds of metres away, the outline of the whale is visible through the clear water. “With this, there’s no boat, no noise, no impact. I fly the kite at around 100-200 feet [approximately 30 to 60 metres] away.”
Much of Oscar’s work is done in cooperation with the Drachen Foundation, a registered non-profit devoted to kites. It was another coincidence – a chance meeting with two Drachen members in a restaurant in Sayulita, Mexico – that led to their long-standing working relationship. Drachen has awarded Oscar grants to continue his KAP work.
His projects are gaining traction. In April of 2010, Discovery Channel aired a segment they produced on the work of Ocean Friendly and the Deep Blue Conservancy, a multinational non-profit dedicated to the preservation of marine life and ecosystems impacted by human activity. Oscar is Deep Blue’s VP and Chief Researcher. “We can collect data through the work we do with Ocean Friendly,” he explains. “We publish the data and create technology with Deep Blue.”
The culmination of these compatible partnerships – of Ocean Friendly and Deep Blue and the Drachen Foundation – was the ability to embark on a new set of research projects aimed at better conservation efforts.
In 2009, Oscar travelled to the Yucatán Peninsula, where he used KAP to track the consequence of human activity on whale sharks. While there, he was invited to photograph the ancient city of Dzibilchaltun, a pre-Columbian Mayan city that dates from 400 BCE, and discovered that the aerial technique – well-suited to documenting the orientation of the structures in a panoramic view – had further exciting applications for archaeology.
“The results were more than satisfactory,” Oscar writes in the 2009 issue of Discourse Magazine. “[KAP’s] aesthetic and scientific value came to light. The photographs show that the projection of light that passes through the pyramid during sunrise at the equinox is perfectly aligned with the structure in front of it. It lasts exactly 60 minutes, proving that the Mayans not only had the concept of the solar system, they also had the concept of the hour as a fraction of the rotation of the earth.”
Echoing Sagan’s characterization of the entire planet as one giant organism, Oscar’s work expanded to include land alongside the oceans. “Future applications of KAP in the Yucatán Peninsula are very diverse,” Oscar notes. “They include the possibility of taking stereo photography of the Mayan ruins to update cartography records, documenting the breeding area of flamingos at Rio Lagartos and Celestun, documenting the erosion processes and sediment transport along the shoreline that surrounds the peninsula for protection management and monitoring the aggregation of whale sharks to enhance conservation strategies.”
Each animal and plant has a place and purpose in every ecosystem. Each of those ecosystems has a place and a purpose in the one big ecosystem that is our planet. Only we human beings have the ability and the arrogance to damage the planet’s ecosystem, and only we can repair it. Oscar Frey is one of the thousands of dedicated scientists and researchers working against time and public apathy to produce solutions to the growing number of ecological crises Earth faces in the 21st century.
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All photographs are © Oscar Frey
