Couple few days back, our good Clam-friends Marty DelVecchio and Jason Grow shot some spectacular footage of basking sharks off Bass Rocks.
It’s awesome! And now also on boston.com as one of the top articles this weekend. Because awesome.
A friend of mine from Boston texted me. “Is that your boss who took the video of the sharks I’m seeing on the front page of the Globe’s website? I know you work at a place that does ocean work and also flies drones.” And then I had to explain that no, we have more than one drone enthusiast here we have like a bunch. Gloucester, with its high school robotics program, robotics lab over at the Paint Factory, and general nerd subculture, is kinda the freakin’ drone capital of the Northeast right now. Yeah, I said it. We do drones. We go down to the sea in drones. Then we chase our children with them. Because it’s fun.
They should re-do our sign at the Rotary now Gloucester: You’ll Hear A Slight Whirring Sound.
Again, that video is the top one on the Globe right now. Because it’s amazing footage of our natural world, just meters offshore, and drones are cool. You’re with me, right? That it’s like, a thing? A popular thing?
Of course, our humble aerial photography drones aren’t always um, embraced by the community. Take this letter to the editor from last week’s Old White Guys Don’t Like Change Daily (aka Gloucester Daily Times).
The real threat posed by the coming flood of drones will be to our granular experience of the outdoors and to our quality of life. Imagine no sidewalk, street, park, river, lake, beach, ocean, or landscape without the presence of moving drones. The air will become cluttered with them… almost everything drones do undermines our direct experience of the natural world, and commodifies our activities. Drones perfectly complement and enhance our orientation and lives as consumers.
We should stop thinking that technological inventions should not be scrutinized, judged, and either actively accepted or rejected. We should stop thinking that all things digital, computerized, or “connected” are simply expanding our choices or are somehow more benign, democratic, empowering, or egalitarian than products of the pre-digital past.
Yeah, too bad drones ruin our appreciation of the natural world. Good point (SARCASM). Like it or not, we have a cool thing going on here in town, and we might as well embrace it. God forbid cool aerial footage goes viral and brings tourists. You can stand in the way of progress and technology shouting into the wind like Grandpa Simpson, or you can roll with the changes and say “Oh, wow. Look what we did. Look what Gloucester’s doing that other cities are behind on.” Your choice.
I’d rather Marty keep shooting hella dope videos.
Love the sharks, but the best part was Old Blue Eyes singing Mack The Knife. I say we name the sharks Sukey Tawdrey and Leroy Brown.
That comment sounds familiar. They are awesome names. I hope they get kids thinking about science and sealife!
Thanks for the shots, but please lose Sinatra and pick up Satchmo’s version.
How awesome that he was able to capture this!! Is there some kind of drone tip line that we can use to alert him to cool things that are happening so he can film stuff like this, or is it just a matter of being in the right place at the right time? Either way, it’s super cool, and it’s videos like this that make me appreciate drones for what they do (vs. what paranoid delusional people think they do).