cesarharada.com/blog

About Me

Cesar Harada (28) is an French-Japanese inventor and entrepreneur.
Cesar invented a ground-breaking sailing technology, a boat that changes shape, “Protei”. Originally developed to clean up the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Protei is an Open Hardware project now developed by an international community of scientists, engineers and designers for many other applications such as nuclear radiation sensing off Japan, plastic sensing in the Pacific garbage patch, red tide studies in Mexico and much more.
Cesar is also the general coordinator of the future International Ocean Station. Former Project leader at MIT, Cesar teaches Masters in Design & Environment at Goldsmiths University in London. Cesar graduated in 2009 from the Design Interactions course at the Royal College of Arts in London, his collaborative project Open_Sailing received the Ars Electronica Golden Nica award for the [NEXT IDEA].

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Mapping River Dog Mouth, Mobile Alabama



Yesterday we went aerial mapping a landscape that is just about to change radically : restoration of the oyster reef in Mobile Alabama, Dog river mouth - known as Helen Wood Park beach. In two hours from now (2011 January 22 6AM), hundreds of volunteers will come to install a massive oyster reef here. From 8AM today "Volunteers will be deploying approximately 23,000 bags of oyster shells to create new reefs and habitat at the mouth of Dog River" - see them in action here .

 



Aerial mapping Prof. Dawn McKinney & Prof. Leo Denton of the University of Mobile South Alabama. Thanks to Shannon Dosemagen for organizing the trip. 



These are the different reefs and bags of oyster they are installing. 5 non-profit organizations are working together to accomplish this massive landscaping project. 


We took about 5000 aerial pictures that I turned into 3 very large resolution maps to make one huge map (at the top of the post):



Download these full resolution maps to your computer as .zip file (27mb). If you want to learn how to make one of these map, check this post.


This time, in addition of aerial photography, I also took ground samples (~250x microscopy), sand, sediment, organic material taken at regular interval. The idea is : if we are able to say what is on the ground - sometimes we may find oil spilled still - we can qualify and quantify what we see on the aerial pictures. We will come back in a few weeks to map again and see the effects of installing an artificial oyster reef here : "before and after" :) 
sample -1, 20110121 Anne Wood Park, Mobile, Alabamasample 1, 20110121 Anne Wood Park, Mobile, Alabamasample 2, 20110121 Helen Wood Park, Mobile, Alabamasample 3, 20110121 Helen Wood Park, Mobile, Alabamasample 3b, 20110121 Helen Wood Park, Mobile, Alabamasample 3b, 20110121 Anne Wood Park, Mobile, Alabamasample 4, 20110121 Helen Wood Park, Mobile, Alabamasample 5, 20110121 Helen Wood Park, Mobile, Alabamasample 6, 20110121 Helen Wood Park, Mobile, Alabamasample 8, 20110121 Helen Wood Park, Mobile, Alabamasample 10, 20110121 Helen Wood Park, Mobile, Alabamasample 11, 20110121 Helen Wood Park, Mobile, Alabamasample 12, 20110121 Helen Wood Park, Mobile, Alabamasample 14, 20110121 Helen Wood Park, Mobile, Alabamasample 15, 20110121 Helen Wood Park, Mobile, Alabama

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date : 20110121@15:41, low-tide. 
Location : 30.57562, -88.07847 
Mapping for Grassroots Mapping & LA Bucket Brigade. 
Photos : Prof. Leo Denton and Prof. Dawn McKinney 
Stitching : Cesar Harada 
Left at 10:45 - return 20:30 
Milleage : start 761963 - end 764803

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Re-Posted on the Grassroots Mapping blog page : http://grassrootsmapping.org/2011/01/mapping-river-dog-mouth-mobile-alabama/

Filed under  //  Aerial   Alabama   Grassrootsmapping   Helium   LA Bucket Brigade   LABB   Mapping   Mobile   Nature   Oyster   Reef   Reserve   Restoration   River  
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Grassroots mapping

A couple of days ago, we went with the folks of LA Bucket Brigade (again!) to do some grassroots mapping (aerial photography actually) in the Bay Jimmy & Wilkinson Bayou (29.45193, -89.89812), and it was superb ~ and dystopic :/


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Seen from up there is so different from what you see from the water :


We went in those super cool (noisy though) boats :
 
Boat seen from the balloon (!!!) :
 
This is how it works :
 
So we do the same but with a helium Balloon flying at ~1000ft, with a camera attached to it, looking down, taking a picture automatically every 5 seconds or so : 

I took a chance to try to enhance the "photography cabin" with Sue Stoessel, Bennie Gregory and Hunter Daniel (in a previous mapping trip though): 
 



You see, it is just a bottle of soda and some duct tape, you can DIY it!
 
Now you may wonder why we take these pictures :
- for science study and evaluation of the impact of the oil spill on the coast and the marsh lands.
- for legal purposes, so we have evidences of the impact of the oil spill at the court of justice ;) 

I'm in love with this technique Gonzo Earth and Grassrootsmapping keep on improving, also because I really need it to assess the efficiency of the oil spill collecting robot I am working on : protei.org. Here we were testing to see how well we can sail the robot upwind with a long tail : 

 
that's the robot I am prototyping this week : 
 
If you want to help on the making of the protei robot, or do some aerial photography of the oil spill, get involved at LA Bucket Brigade, contact Shannon Dosemagen <shannon@labucketbrigade.org>, or Hunter Daniel <hunterdaniel@gmail.com> 901-550-7667 directly by phone to arrange a trip in the sun :)

Filed under  //  Aerial   Balloon   Barataria   Bay   Grassrootsmapping   Helium   Jimmy   LA Bucket Brigade   LABB   Louisiana   Mapping   NOLA   New Orleans   Oil Spill   Photography   Stitching   TEDxBoston   TEDxOilSpill   Tilling  
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