Could flying drones make life safer on Mount Everest?

Nepali officials believe so.ÌęEarlier this week, officials with the Pasang Lhamu Khumbu Rural Municipality—the local agency that oversees the Nepali side of the mountain—tested a Chinese cargo drone at Base Camp, to see if the device could haul garbage and gear off the peak. Officials say that the aerial device could someday reduce the number of trips that porters make through the deadly Khumbu Icefall.

“We want to alleviate the burden on Sherpas who risk their lives hauling garbage from high altitudes, which can often be a formidable task,” Jagat Prasad Bhusal, the chief administrative officer of the municipality toldÌę°żłÜłÙČőŸ±»ć±đ.Ìę“At such high altitudes in this region, even removing a small piece of chocolate can prove to be a challenging task.”

The group conducted test flights on April 29 andÌę30 using a FlyCart 30, an industrial delivery drone built by Chinese company DJI. According to Bhusal, the experiment had promising—but not exactly perfect—results. On Monday, April 29, operators flew the craft from Base Camp, which sits at 17,600 feet, up to Camp I, which is at 19,900 feet, however they were unable to land the drone at the higher camp. The extreme altitude in the Himalayas presents a challenge for rotor-powered aircraft like helicopters and drones, since spinning blades generate less lift in thin air. On Tuesday, April 30, operators repeated the trip, but this time with two oxygen tanks in tow. Bhusal said the load weighed approximately 40 pounds, and the drone completed the journey.

“Our outlook on this initiative is optimistic,” he said. “We’re encouraged by its performance.”

Helicopters used for ferrying gear and rescuing climbers on Everest are specifically designed with more powerful engines than traditional models to overcome the altitude. Drones, too, are diminished at high altitudes. DJI claims the FlyCart 30 has a maximum flying altitude of 19,600 feet. The 40-pound payload used in the recent test was less than the carrying capacity of the FlyCart 30, which DJI lists at 66 pounds.

Mountain environments present other challenges for aerial drones: topographic features can block the radio signals that transmit directions from the drone operator. Bhusal said the group did experience “range problems” during practice flights, but that the team devised a solution. They plan to send a second drone operator higher onto the mountain to take control of the vehicle for the next round of tests. The FlyCart 30 allows multiple pilots to control it, and a pilot located at a higher altitude is less likely to have his signals blocked by hillsides, he said. “We’ve developed a workaround,” he said. “We will be sending a technician to Camp 2, which should resolve the signal issue once the route is available.”

Following the test, officials that they expect drones to start hauling trash back to Base Camp as early as 2025.

Cargo drones could represent a breakthrough in the years-long effort to reduce danger in the Khumbu Icefall. The cascading glacier, which towers above Base Camp, presents deadly occupational hazards for the hundreds of workers that haul gear up and down the mountain for expeditions on the Nepali side. The icefall is prone to avalanches and collapsing ice towers, and it is riddled with dozens of crevasses. But no other routes exists from Base Camp to Camp I, so anyone wanting to venture higher onto the peak must navigate the sector.

Over the years, Sherpas have refined safety strategies in the Khumbu Icefall to try and mitigate risk. Every year the route through the glacier is charted by a group of specialty workers called the Icefall Doctors, and in recent years they have sought to thread the passage away from slopes that produce frequent avalanches. Porters usually ascend through the icefall early in the morning, when ice is firmer and less susceptible to collapse. And in recent years, some expedition operators have ferried gear to and from higher camps via helicopter as a way to reduce manpower.

Despite these efforts, the Khumbu Icefall is frequently the site of death and disaster. In 2014 an avalanche swept down the icefall and killed 16 climbing Sherpas, and last April, three guides died after a collapsing ice serac buried them. According to the ,Ìęat least 50 people have died in the icefall since 1953.

And not all of these strategies are likely to last. Earlier this year the Pasang Lhamu Khumbu Rural Municipality enacted a series of rules governing expedition operations, and one law prohibits operators from ferrying gear to higher camps via helicopter. But according to , officials recently walked the rule back after dangers in the Khumbu Icefall delayed Icefall Doctors from completing the route by 12 days. Instead, the local municipality will allow helicopters to deliver gear to Camp II, located at an elevation of 20,997 feet. “Airlifting supplies to higher camps will safeguard the lives of high-altitude workers, who have to pass through treacherous icefall section with heavy loads,” Rakesh Gurung, director of Nepal’s department of tourism, told the publication.

Ben Ayers and Tulsi Rauniyar contributed to this report.Ìę

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When smartphones first hit the market 15 years ago, their cameras left a lot to be desired, and we didn’t have apps like Adobe Lightroom for on-the-fly editing. Our DSLRs were getting better, but they had a fraction of the high-end and photographer-friendly features we see today. Camera technology has come a long way since then, and today we find ourselves surrounded by intuitive, powerful cameras that capture the world in beautiful detail. Below are our three favorites for 2023.

The Winners at a Glance

Apple iPhone 14 Pro

Sony a7R V

DJI Mavic 3 Classic

How We Test

Number of Products Tested: 7

Number photos taken: 5,000

Locations visited: 25+

You’ve all heard the cliche about your grandparents walking uphill both ways in a foot of snow to school. For photographers, a similar cliche would start with film cameras and include complaints about 36-frame rolls of film, finicky cameras, and a labor-intensive development and printing process.

The point here is that thanks to digital photography, the proliferation of smartphones, and the rise of social media, nearly everyone on the planet has become a better and more prolific photographer. It’s a hobby and skill that has been democratized and the world is (mostly) a better place for it.

Today, just when you think that cameras couldn’t get any better, and the process of toning and sharing your photos that much easier, the industry turns around and launches new technology that moves both those things forward. The developments happen so fast that it’s almost impossible to keep track and choose what’s right for your photography needs.

That’s why we’re purposely keeping things simple this year. We’ve recommended just three cameras—one smartphone, one DSLR, and one drone—because those choices will cover nearly everyone’s bases. These cameras are so good that no matter where you are, or what you’re shooting, you’ll come away with stunning photos that tell great stories and capture important moments.

Meet Our Lead Tester

Before Jakob Schiller was a columnist at șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű he spent almost a decade working as a photojournalist at newspapers around the country. He’s old enough to have shot film, but since the rise of the digital camera, has taken well over 1,000,000 photos on various DSLRs and smartphones. He loves photography because it facilitates adventure and captures important historical moments, but he’s also a tech lover and can geek out with the best of them about things like resolution, autofocus, and shadow detail.

The Reviews: The Best Cameras of 2023

Apple iPhone 14 Pro ($999)

Pros: A larger camera sensor makes photos that rival those of a DSLR
Cons: Not a DSLR

Thanks to a sensor that’s 65 percent larger than the one included in the iPhone 13 Pro, plus the ability to shoot in the uncompressed Apple ProRAW format, the new 14 Pro can take 48-megapixel photos that have stunning detail for a smartphone. For regular photos, the iPhone automatically takes every four pixels on its sensor and converts them into much larger “quad pixels” that can drink in more light and produce a regular 12-megapixel image that looks great even in low light situations. On the software side, the Photonic Engine software allows the 14 Pro to combine multiple, uncompressed images into one single great photo.

Bottom Line: The iPhone 14 Pro is a powerful adventure camera that takes amazing photos and fits in your pocket.

Sony a7RV ($3,900)

Pros: Improved autofocus and class-leading resolution
Cons: You’ll need a suite of lenses to really make the most of this camera

If you’re trying to land a photo on the cover of șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű magazine, the a7RV is a great camera to use. That’s because it packs a gigantic 61-megapixel, full-frame sensor that captures humongous and detail-rich photos that look great in print (and online, of course). You’d also be impressed with the new autofocus that’s a big step up from the a7RIV model and can help you nail a wide variety of action shots by auto-recognizing and locking onto not only humans, but also birds, insects, cars, and planes. When you’re shooting action, it will capture up to ten frames per second, even in the compressed RAW mode, and for video, it shoots 8K footage and comes with impressive stabilization.

Bottom Line: If you’re willing to pay, the Sony a7RV gets you some of the best digital imaging technology on the market.

DJI Mavic 3 Classic (Starting at $1,599)

Pros: Top-shelf features in a more affordable drone
Cons: Still not cheap

DJI made this drone for those of us who need to create high-quality editorial or marketing content but aren’t professional drone pilots shooting for Hollywood productions. Case in point: It comes with a small but still powerful 4/3 CMOS 20-megapixel Hasseblad camera that has a great color profile and shoots absolutely gorgeous 5.1K footage. A 46-minute flight time is respectable and the omnidirectional sensors help ensure pilots, especially those who are new to drones, don’t crash the Classic into nearby objects. We suggest you pay the extra $150 and spring for DJI’s remote, the DJI RC, so that you don’t have to use your phone as the controller. The DJI RC has a generous 5.5-inch screen and is a joy to use, especially for those of us who are still mastering the art of drone flight.

How to Buy

The best question you can ask yourself before buying a camera is, “what kind of camera do I really need to execute on the job I want to do?” If you’re a weekend warrior who’s just looking to update your social profiles and maybe make an 8×10 print of your favorite outdoor spot, the iPhone 14 Pro is the best choice. It »ćŽÇ±đČőČÔ’t have a full-frame sensor or interchangeable lenses, but it’s easier to carry, and packs enough resolution to help you nail the kind of photos you want to take. We also love that you can take a stunning photo on your iPhone, bring it into the Adobe Lightroom app for toning, and then immediately post it for the world to see.

If you’re trying to break into magazine photography or work for a marketing agency that’s putting together a big campaign, you’ll need more than the iPhone. A camera like the Sony a7RV has a full-frame sensor that’s much bigger than the iPhone’s and therefore drinks in significantly more light and makes photos that are several times more detailed and rich. The a7RV also works with Sony’s giant selection of high-quality lenses (wide angles, fixed, and zooms) that will help pros or aspiring pros create photos that just aren’t possible with the iPhone. There are a few downsides, though: building out a full Sony system will cost thousands of dollars; none of the Sony gear fits in your pocket; and you’ll need a high-powered laptop to process the gigantic files.

Finally, we know that anyone who’s truly invested in drone work will know exactly what they need to get their job done. The rest of us who are drone-curious, or might need a drone here and there, will benefit from the Mavic 3 Classic because it’s powerful enough for pro-level work but won’t totally break the bank. It’s the perfect middle ground and great place to start.

When it’s time to upgrade your gear, don’t let the old stuff go to waste–donate it for a good cause and divert it from the landfill. our partner, Gear Fix, will repair and resell your stuff for free! Just box up your retired items, , and send them off. We’ll donate 100 percent of the proceeds to .

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Content will always be king. Put another way: you have to tell a good story if you want an audience to pay attention—be it in Hollywood or on Instagram. Thankfully, it’s never been easier to create mesmerizing images and videos that will galvanize your viewers. These are the cameras we recommend for the job.

DJI Mavic 3 ($2,200)

Our favorite upgrade to the Mavic 3 drone is the new Hasselblad-made 4/3 CMOS sensor that shoots 20-megapixel photos with great color and improved range. The result: incredible high-contrast images and crisp shots in low light. Other notable features include 5.1K video; a second, built-in 162-millimeter-equivalent zoom lens; and improved obstacle avoidance. 31.6 oz

Insta360 GO 2 ($300)

This action camera makes our list because of its size. About the dimensions of a baby carrot, it nearly disappears on your body—significantly more so than similar, better-known models. The video quality isn’t quite as nice as a GoPro’s, but you still get buttery smooth and richly colored clips that are perfect for Instagram. 0.93 oz

GoPro Hero10 Black ($500)

The Hero10 costs only $100 more than the Hero9, but it’s significantly better in every way: mind-blowing electronic stabilization, ultra-rich 5.3K footage, and 23-megapixel photos (you can also pull enormous stills from the video). All that plus GoPro’s best-in-class ecosystem of accessories. It’s an easy-to-use but powerful camera that amateurs and pros will both appreciate. 5.4 oz

Google Pixel 6 Pro ($900)

The photos you get from the Google 6 Pro and Apple iPhone 13 Pro are fairly similar. But the 6 Pro stood out this year because the resolution is higher and the overall tonality is just slightly better. We were also impressed with the new software that automatically shoots accurate portraits of people with a variety of skin tones. Bonus points for a relatively reasonable price considering that it has three lenses, a 4X zoom, and software that helps with low-light photos. 7.4 oz

Sony a7IV ($2,500)

Unless you’re a full-time pro, you don’t need Sony’s flagship a1 mirrorless camera. That’s why the brand launched its a7IV, which costs less than half the price of the a1 but still comes with plenty of top-end features, such as whip-fast and highly accurate autofocus (for tracking movement), the ability to shoot up to ten frames per second (for capturing peak action), and respectable 33-megapixel files (big enough for gorgeous prints). 23.3 oz

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“Hi,” Barbara Garrett said, phone to her ear. “I’m with a partner, and we’re up in the mountains and have no way down.”

“OK,” the 911 operator said.

“I don’t know.ÌęWe thought we were on a trail, but we’re way up high and—I don’t know. We’ve been climbing and climbing and climbing, and I can’t even find a trail to go down.”

“OK. Do you know what trail you’re on?”

“Well…” Then she began to explain.

Garrett was 74. At 2 P.M. on April 3, 2020, she and her hiking partner, 63-year-old David Burgin, had left a parking lot at the city limits of Ogden, Utah, and hiked several miles on the Indian Trail into the Wasatch Mountains. During the return hike in the evening, Garrett started getting nervous. She thought they’d been heading the right way, but they were still going up, and were now on an unfamiliar slope where the trail was banded by cliffs. It didn’t make sense.

“I don’t think we’re on the trail anymore,” she told Burgin. He said, “Well, it might not be the trail, but it’s a trail, and it’s headed toward town.” The slope kept ramping up; to keep their footing, they had to tug on roots and rocks, with Burgin telling Garrett, “Come on. You can do it.” Finally, they came to a narrow ledge that ran above a cliff tall enough to injure her if she fell off. For the first time in the four years she’d been hiking with Burgin, Garrett was scared.

They’d met while hiking, back in 2017. He’d taken her picture at sunset, on top of the Ogden Canyon Overlook Trail, and they’d chatted all the way down like a couple of high schoolers. After saying goodbye, Garrett started walking toward her Dodge Caravan but then turned around, walked back over, and gave Burgin a hug under the stars. It was such a great day.

This was the worst day. They’d crossed the ledge, scrambled up more steep terrain, and were now stuck on a flat perch. The sun dropped behind the ridgeline. The temperature was in the forties, and it would soon be dark. They were at 6,000 feet.

“OK, all right,” the dispatcher said. “So I’m trying to see where the map is pinging you. It’s not a very good reading.”

“Oh, I’m kind of hiding behind a rock. You mean you can find my cell phone?”

“Yeah. It’s telling me that you’re possibly by Ogden Canyon, but it’s very far. Give me one second, OK?”

Garrett heard typing. Then the dispatcher connected her to a sheriff’s deputy who didn’t seem to understand her fear or fatigue, because he said, “While you got a little bit of daylight, just start working your way down, and I’ll come up and then try to find you.”

“Well…” Garrett sighed.

“Let me get your phone number.”

“Oh, my gosh.” Garrett knew they were in danger. What she didn’t know was that an uncommon kind of rescuer would soon be hitting the mountains to search for them.

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DJI Mini 2 ($450)

Flying a drone and recording beautiful footage at the same time is difficult. The Mini 2 still takes practice to master, but with features like preprogrammed flight modes, you can worry less about maneuvering and more about recording your friends. We also like that DJI upgraded the Mini 2’s hardware to shoot 4K video and RAW images. At 8.8 ounces, the device is light enough that it »ćŽÇ±đČőČÔ’t have to be registered with the Federal Aviation Administration. Folded up, it’s about the size of a thin paperback—small enough that it’s easy to throw in your pack and take into the backcountry.

iPhone 12 Pro Max ($1,099)

Pro-level cameras have full-frame sensors that drink in loads of light to create superior image quality. That technology isn’t available in a phone (yet), but with the 12 Pro Max, Apple has gotten much closer. Along with expanding the sensor behind its 26-millimeter lens by an impressive 47 percent, the company improved its stabilization and increased pixel size. The result is noticeably better image quality than past models offered, both during the day and in low light. Paired with Apple’s ProRAW, a new file format that allows photographers more control when editing, you get detail-packed files that move the iPhone an important step closer to its pro-camera cousins.

GoPro Hero9 Black ($450)

To test the Hero9 Black, we attached it to the hood of a side-by-side off-road vehicle and rocketed through the desert, sailing over bumpy sections and through sandy washes. The ride itself was jolting. The footage? Polished. That’s thanks to HyperSmooth 3.0, GoPro’s improved electronic image stabilization system. It »ćŽÇ±đČőČÔ’t match what you’d get from a pro-level gimbal, but it’s still damn impressive for an action cam. Other worthy upgrades include 30 percent better battery performance (one charge lasts roughly two hours) and a 1.4-inch front-facing screen to record yourself.

Sony Alpha 7C ($1,800)

If you’re looking to graduate from taking photos with your phone, the Alpha 7C is the upgrade you should buy. It’s quite compact—in between a point-and-shoot and a DSLR—but its powerful 24-megapixel full-frame sensor produces gorgeous shots that look just as good on your wall as they do on Instagram. Pair it with Sony’s robust group of interchangeable lenses, from a light pancake lens to a high-quality zoom. The battery lasts a surprisingly long time (about two days), and it captures up to ten frames per second, so you’re almost guaranteed to nail the action shot.

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iPhone 11 Pro ($999)

Three lenses on the iPhone 11 Pro shoot stunning landscape photos. A 12-megapixel, f/2.4, 12mm ultrawide-angle lens next to 26mm and 52mm lenses capture crisp action and vivid backgrounds at the same time, like a skier ripping down a mountain against vibrant alpine scenery. We’re also fans of the Night Mode feature: the 26mm lens brackets several photos together to produce crisp, accurate low-light photos.

DJI Mavic Mini Drone ($399)

About the size of a ­sandwich, and weighing just over half a pound, the Mavic Mini is ultraportable and perfect for adventurers headed for hard-to-reach spots. Spec-wise, the Mini isn’t quite pro quality, but it shoots attractive 2.7K video that’s stabilized using a three-axis gimbal, and it’s good for a respectable 30 minutes of flight time. An improved app with a simple interface makes the Mini easy to fly for those without much drone experience.

GoPro Hero8 Black ($400)

The headline here is Hyper­Smooth 2.0: GoPro’s improved image-­stabilization technology, which yields some of the cleanest footage we’ve seen from an action camera. Your videos won’t look as steady as they would if you were shooting on a gimbal, but they’ll be damn close—reason alone to upgrade from the Hero7 Black. Other updates include built-in mounting fingers (the Hero8 »ćŽÇ±đČőČÔ’t need a special case to mate with tripods, hand grips, and the like), better audio recording, and new clip-on accessories like a directional microphone and flip-up screen.

Sony a7R III ($2,800)

The a7R III remains one of the most powerful cameras available and a top choice for adventure photographers. It captures action at ten frames per second with a full-frame, 42.4-­megapixel sensor, a silent shutter mode, and great ISO range (up to 102,400). It isn’t new, but it makes our list because Sony recently dropped the price from $3,200. Now you can shoot with a wildly capable camera without draining your wallet (as much).

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The robot was born out of a treasure hunt.

It all started in 2010, when Eric Stackpole was a promising young engineer designing satellite technology as an intern at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. He was simultaneously working toward a master’s degree at nearby Santa Clara University and was prone to procrastinating. Lately, he’d become taken with the idea of building his own underwater robot.

Some of the engineers at Santa Clara were already developing autonomous submersibles, and Stackpole had noticed that they “seemed to be having all the fun.” Instead of spending years planning for a mission, they’d design, build, and deploy a sub within months. “I was like, man, I want one of those,” he says. “You don’t have to have a rocket, just some curiosity and a shoreline.”

He needed a purpose to guide his design, so he asked friends for suggestions. A childhood buddy responded with a link to describing a Gold Rush–era heist that ended with a pile of gold stashed in an underwater cave in Northern California’s Coastal Range. “Down the rabbit hole I went,” says Stackpole. “I started reading more and more about it and basically became obsessed.”

Soon after, he met David Lang, an idealist in his mid-twenties who was working for a startup that did crowdfunding for new companies. Lang had sought out Stackpole after hearing about a guy who was, he says, “building a submarine in his garage.” When he discovered that Stackpole was constructing a small remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, Lang says, “I thought that was even cooler.” The two men bonded over their passions for exploration and technology, imagining the many ways the sub might be used. “They don’t have a term for love at first sight in business,” says Lang, “but that’s what it was.”

Stackpole and Lang , but it still gets them animated. On a sunny spring day in San Francisco, they’re seated on a couch in the glass-enclosed meeting space of , a newly minted startup created by merging their brand, OpenROV, and Spoondrift, a three-year-old company that makes solar-powered buoys that can transmit data from anywhere in the ocean. With $7 million in new venture funding, Sofar is one of a growing number of companies developing technologies that make it vastly cheaper and easier to track ocean conditions and observe marine life, spurring an incipient revolution in ocean science and exploration.

Lang, 34, has intense brown eyes that light up when he talks about big ideas. The hunt for gold, he explains, was a MacGuffin—the filmmaking term for a goal that gets the narrative going but ultimately »ćŽÇ±đČőČÔ’t matter. “You hear of lost treasure and that’s the beginning of your epic adventure,” he says. “By the end, you forget it existed.”

Soon after the guys met, Lang was laid off and decided to go all-in on the robot. He and Stackpole sited their project in Stackpole’s garage in Cupertino, and in the spirit of open-source development, they launched a website, , to solicit feedback. They heard from amateur hobbyists, graduate students, and professional engineers all over the world.

Initially, the goal wasn’t to create a company so much as a revolutionary tool. “From the first conversation, it was: ‘What if there were 10,000 of these around the world on the front lines of exploration?’ ” says Lang. “We kind of worked backward from that dream.”

Though unmanned submarines have powered monumental finds—deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the 1970s, —they can cost millions to build and tens of thousands per day to operate, since they require the support of large ships. Simpler models with lesser capabilities have been around for a couple of decades, but even those run $50,000 and up. Stackpole and Lang had something different in mind: an everyman’s ROV. The size of a toaster and operated by laptop, it would be an aquatic version of the aerial drones that wannabe action-sports filmmakers get for Christmas. Like almost all ROVs, it would be tethered to a surface controller, but operators could send it a few hundred feet below the waves. It would sell for around $1,000.Ìę

In early 2012, they worked their way into a meeting with the Marine Science and Technology Foundation, a nonprofit funded by Eric Schmidt, then the executive chairman of Google, and his wife, Wendy. The Schmidts were offering grants for projects that advanced oceanographic research. Stackpole and Lang showed up with a barely functioning prototype and a speech about the world-changing potential of a budget ROV. (They neglected to mention the gold.)

“They said, ‘OK, what do you need?’ ” says Lang. “At that point, we were strapped for cash and thinking only about the very next steps. So we asked for a few thousand dollars to buy parts to build 15 more prototypes.”

The foundation was flummoxed. The ask was so low—most of their grants were in the hundreds of thousands—that a typical proposal review process didn’t make sense. In the end, Lang and Stackpole walked away with just over $7,000, promising to submit their receipts.

Marine scientists have often complained that we care more about understanding the emptiness of space than the living seas that make up 70 percent of our planet.

“Why are we ignoring the oceans?” Bob Ballard, the celebrated deep-sea explorer, groused at the start of his on the future of underwater research. He claimed that NASA’s annual budget to investigate the heavens would fund the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s sea exploration for the next 1,600 years. Others have pointed out that we have better maps of the surfaces of Mars and Venus than the seafloor. , 80 percent of the ocean realm remains unexplored.

Making matters worse, government support for exploratory science isn’t what it used to be. Coming out of World War II, that the quest for knowledge was essential to progress. Following the creation of the National Science Foundation in 1950, government funding dominated R&D across numerous disciplines. These days, not so much. found that in 2015, federal dollars accounted for less than half of the funding for so-called basic research—projects that don’t have immediate commercial applications. By contrast, that level was above 70 percent in the 1970s and 61 percent as recently as 2003.Ìę

These days, new hope for ocean exploration often comes via the largesse of billionaire philanthropists, who’ve poured money into a range of projects. Marine research has long had its patrons—David Packard established the now iconic Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in 1987—and in recent years there has been a stampede of benefactors looking to the sea.

Making the biggest splash, at least in the press, is hedge-fund magnate Ray Dalio, who in a last year declared a desire “to revive the Jacques Cousteau moment” with a high-profile media initiative called , which involves converting a 280-foot former oil-industry survey vessel into a fully equipped research ship for a National Geographic Television series produced by James Cameron. Dalio has been loaning out his 184-foot yacht, , to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution since 2012, but , Ocean­Xplorer, is as much a filmmaker’s dream machine as it is a scientific marvel, with a submarine hangar that seems straight out of the Avatar production book, video-­editing stations capable of working with 8K raw footage, and cameras pretty much everywhere. The big idea is to chronicle expeditions guided by researchers and explorers in a reality-format show that captures both natural wonders and human struggles. Last October, a $185 million joint effort to “capitalize on OceanX’s powerful imagery” as a way to advocate for marine protection and conservation.Ìę

The Schmidts also have a snazzy research ship, , which has been almost continuously at sea since 2013 and offers free passage to scientists using new technologies and research methods. On board, they have access to a first-rate sonar system for seafloor mapping, a fleet of submersibles, and an advanced computing system that enables virtual-reality data visualization (think plankton in 3-D), plus teak outdoor furniture and a luxurious sauna.Ìę

More important, the Schmidts have pioneered a Silicon Valley approach to ocean exploration by funding the development of disruptive technologies. Around the time that the Marine Science and Technology Foundation met with Stackpole and Lang, it had funded an adventurous British engineer named Richard Jenkins. Jenkins had set a new wind-­powered land-speed record with a contraption he’d built a few years earlier, and he applied what he’d learned . The 23-foot autonomous vessel can navigate the open ocean for a year at a time, collecting data and streaming it back to shore via satellite, with power provided by solar panels. It potentially enables a multitude of research and monitoring activities—measuring ocean acidification, tracking tagged fish, detecting oil spills—at a fraction of the cost of a manned expedition. No big ship or crew required: just set some drones on their way and have a seat in front of your computer.

For researchers, affordable tech opens up new worlds. “Your decision process is fundamentally different when you can use cheaper tools,” says Jim Bellingham, director of the at Woods Hole. For decades ocean scientists have structured their work around the limited time they could afford to book aboard vessels, subs, and other million-dollar equipment. With data suddenly much easier to obtain, says Bellingham, a growing number of researchers have found that their dream projects can happen much faster.

David Lang is looking a bit green. It’s just before noon, and for the past couple of hours we’ve been in a small boat, bobbing in the waves of Monterey Bay. Also on board are the hired captain, a Sofar marketing staffer, and a cameraman filming , the geeky web series hosted by MythBusters veteran Adam Savage. Floating next to us in an inflatable boat are Stackpole, Sofar CEO Tim Janssen, and a second cameraman controlling a DJI Phantom drone. A low ceiling of fog has delayed what we’re all waiting for: a plane that will make a series of low passes overhead, each time shoving one of Sofar’s smart buoys out a cargo door.

The buoys, called , look like bright yellow plastic basketballs, each topped with a sun hat of solar panels. Outfitted with sensors to measure wind and waves, they can transmit data via satellite from almost anywhere on the water. Sofar sells them for $4,900 apiece, or about 10 to 50 times less than the price of the large surface buoys commonly used by NOAA. The Spotters don’t collect data at the same precision or frequency as those traditional tools, but because they’re so cheap and small, they can be deployed in locations where standard buoys aren’t viable because of expense or logistics. In February 2018, dropped five Spotters off a ship into the Southern Ocean, which circles Antarctica and is the birthplace of massive storms that can affect coastlines thousands of miles away. The Spotters were the first free-floating buoys to continuously measure wind and waves in the frigid waters, and their endurance suggested the possibility of vastly improved weather tracking in the region. In the course of a year, they drifted more than 4,000 miles and transmitted readings from the notoriously violent Drake Passage.Ìę

In addition to improving forecasts, autonomous monitoring tools have the potential to inform scientific studies of climate change; a Saildrone recently lapped Antarctica to collect first-of-its-kind data on carbon levels. In the shipping industry, detailed real-time information about ocean conditions can help tankers alter their routes, saving enormous amounts of fuel.Ìę

Then there are the recreational uses. Surfers and anglers get their marine forecasts from applications that rely on government buoys, which are typically stationed near shipping lanes and airports. If your favorite break or fishing hole is miles away, the predictions aren’t trustworthy. Which is why, last year, big-wave surfer a Spotter near Mavericks, the monster break south of San Francisco. Suddenly, he was able to get local data delivered to his phone, letting him know the size and frequency of swells. In many places—remote atolls, rocky coastlines—­getting buoys into the field is a major challenge, and today the Sofar team is hoping to demonstrate that Spotters can tolerate one of the simplest deployment techniques: dropping them from a plane. The team’s goal is to test different sizes of parachutes to see what it takes to slow the buoy’s descent enough to avoid damaging it. There’s also an alternate system that has Stackpole excited: a cardboard box. If Spotters are going to be sent to customers all over the world, he figures, why not mail them in boxes that double as landing systems?Ìę

Before loading five Spotters into a chartered plane at a nearby airport, Stackpole explained how, if you opened the specially designed top flaps of a box before pushing it out the cargo door, the aerodynamics would cause the flaps to extend outward like wings, making the box spin and creating enough drag to slow its fall. Once in the water, the box would break apart, with minimal impact on the marine environment. “There’s all sorts of ways it could go wrong,” he admitted with a smile. “The box could end up tumbling and the Spotter could fall out. We’ll just have to figure it out!”

But first the fog has to lift. On the water, the team fills the time with a test flight of the Phantom drone and some fretting about a nearby sailboat. (“They’re going to think this is a drug drop,” Lang says.) Janssen motors the inflatable craft alongside our boat, and Stackpole offers every­one snacks: a loaf of pepper bread, hummus, and Frosted Mini-Wheats. Lang winces.

The seasickness he’s feeling is just one of the challenges the guys have had to overcome. After getting their funding from the Schmidt foundation in 2012, Stackpole and Lang developed a working ROV and in that cave in the Coastal Range. They didn’t find any gold—the robot’s camera picked up only debris—but the effort earned them a different kind of treasure. The community created through OpenROV.com helped them raise $111,000 in a Kickstarter campaign that promised backers a DIY underwater-robot kit. A year later, OpenROV secured $1.3 million in a funding round led by True Ventures, a San Francisco firm that was an early investor in Fitbit. That propelled the design of their first ready-for-market drone, which they announced,Ìęin another Kickstarter campaign, in 2015.Ìę

, it was roughly the size of a cereal box and looked like it could have been designed by Apple, with a sleek, white, hard-plastic body, jet-black rubber side panels, and a single camera eye front and center. It was capable of withstanding freezing temperatures and dives of up to 330 feet—three times as deep as a typical scuba diver—and could light up a shipwreck (or giant clam) with an array of six LED lights. Twin props enabled a maximum speed of six and a half feet per second. The Trident was a hit, garnering more than $815,000 in pledges.Ìę

Back on the water in Monterey, the fog dissipates suddenly and the plane makes its first bombing run, sending a buoy attached to a small black and red parachute hurtling toward the Pacific. It smacks the water hard, and the crew races over to pick it up. A second drop with a bigger chute seems about perfect, the Spotter touching down with a gentle plop. On the last run the plane sends a box out the window, and just as Stackpole predicted, the top flaps open and it starts to spin, slowing just a bit before thumping into the waves. If it had been dropped from higher up, Lang suggests, it would have worked even better.

Sofar would later decide against using the boxes, but for the moment the team is elated. On the bumpy ride back to shore, Stackpole gives Janssen a high five and says, “We got this!”

On a scorching summer day in Los Angeles, I meet Wendy Schmidt for lunch at a Mediterranean restaurant on Melrose Place. She’s the force behind (SMTP), which in large part was inspired by the experiences of Saildrone and OpenROV. Formed in 2016, the nonprofit’s mission is to support the development of technologies that address ocean-­conservation challenges and are also likely to become profitable. The idea being that you can have the biggest impact by supporting projects that eventually take care of themselves.

“We had this realization that there were lots of people out there with ideas that could change the way we think about solving problems,” she says. Between bites of roasted cauliflower and sea bass, Schmidt tells me about a key moment in the evolution of their thinking. In 2014, she was at the headquarters of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute to oversee testing for that would award $2 million to scientific teams that developed sensors to measure ocean chemistry. While there, she met a scientist who showed her a device he’d created to remove oil from the water after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. (The Schmidts had funded an earlier XPrize competition for exactly such a tool, but this scientist hadn’t registered.) He’d brought it down to the Gulf after the spill, he told her, but never got it in the water. Ever since he returned, it had been in storage.

“He’s a scientist, not a businessperson,” she says. “He »ćŽÇ±đČőČÔ’t understand the marketing. He »ćŽÇ±đČőČÔ’t know who might make use of what he has.” Such a device might be sold to oil companies that are on the hook to mop up spills. This, she explains, is where philanthropy can make the biggest difference: giving innovative ideas a boost so they have a chance.

SMTP’s model is to fund projects for several years, at amounts ranging from $50,000 to $500,000 annually, getting them through the so-called valley of death period between a company’s initial funding and the steady flow of commercial revenue. Recent grantees include a startup that developed a sensor that enables coastal communities to predict dangerous high tides missed by existing government monitors; a handheld DNA scanner that can identify species of fish and other wildlife, thus reducing seafood fraud; and an ROV developed by the inventor of the Roomba that electrocutes and then vacuums up invasive lionfish.Ìę

Others are following the Schmidts’ lead. Last January, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Salesforce founder a $1.5 million donation to the Sustainable Oceans Alliance, which has formed an accelerator to nurture startups developing technologies that improve ocean health. The founders of those startups get $25,000, attend an eight-week leadership program in San Francisco, and are invited on a small-ship cruise in Southeast Alaska. (In return, SOA takes an equity stake in their companies.) A new philanthropic endeavor, , run by a former project lead at X Development, Google’s so-called moon-shot factory, says it will be funding “radical solutions” to ocean problems.

Like Lang and Stackpole, many of the innovators in the ocean-tech sector don’t have a marine background, which can cause them to get ahead of themselves. , founded in San Francisco in 2014 and funded in part by SMTP, started out producing a solar-­powered tracking device for the small fishing boats that are used all over the developing world. About the size of a large smartphone, the trackers use cellular towers to automatically log and share location data. The system allows authorities to better manage fisheries and combat illegal activities, while fishing boats can certify that their catch was taken outside protected zones. During a presentation at a networking event in San Francisco, founder Dave Solomon described how, when the company sent its first run of prototypes to Indonesia, the fishermen wanted to see what was inside the units, so they popped them open, destroying their waterproofing. “We were just a bunch of tech nerds in the Bay Area,” he said. “We had no idea.”

Move fast and break things has, of course, been a defining ethos in Silicon Valley, but it’s an approach that can make traditional researchers uncomfortable. A marine biologist who works with a major conservation organization told me that the billionaires backing the new technologies are too easily captivated by “the next cool thing they hear about at a dinner party.”

Still, for veteran marine scientists, it’s an era of extraordinary opportunity. Woods Hole’s Jim Bellingham recalls launching his own startup, Bluefin Robotics, to manufacture underwater autonomous vehicles in the late 1990s, a time, he says, “when no VCs or angel investors wanted to be in the marine space.” He put his own savings into the company and hit up family and friends. “It was really tough.”

A month after my lunch with Schmidt, I visit Bellingham at his office on Cape Cod. An adviser to both the Schmidts and OceanX, he sees extraordinary possibilities in the merger of tech entrepreneurs and the scientists who really understand the ocean. At Woods Hole, he oversees a project designed to do just that: , a rapid-prototyping facility opened in 2017. Bellingham leads me into the multiroom space, which has a geeky Star Trek vibe and is loaded with laser cutters, high-resolution 3-D printers, and a virtual-reality system.

The vision is to enable researchers and the many marine-technology companies clustered around Woods Hole to collaborate on new designs for everything from tiny sensors to autonomous robots. “Things that used to take months, now you can do in a day,” Bellingham saysÌę

Walking around, we pass by a whiteboard scribbled with engineering diagrams and equations. In the top left corner, someone has written a new and improved motto for innovation: TEST FAST + LEARN CHEAPLY.

A week after the Spotter test, Lang flew to Washington, D.C., to appear before the House Sub­committee on Environment, which was holding a hearing called . Once again he told the story of building a robot to search for gold and how that led to a company launch. The real breakthrough, he said, was the development process: open-source design and crowdfunding weren’t tactics that scientists had considered.

Since Lang and Stackpole began shipping Tridents to Kickstarter backers last fall—two years later than promised, due to manufacturing delays—they have sold thousands of units, now priced at $1,695. supported the purchase of 1,000 of them, for donation to researchers, conservation groups, teachers, and citizen scientists. Among the beneficiaries was a biologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara in Yosemite National Park, where the endangered amphibians spend their winters in alpine lakes capped by thick layers of ice and snow. (Scuba-diving under the ice to make observations would be an enormous endeavor, but deploying a Trident is relatively easy.) Paying customers that bought two drones for special search and rescue operations, like when a car goes underwater.

Ultimately, Lang says, “the size of the business opportunity for us remains to be seen,” though that isn’t preventing Sofar from thinking big. The company’s most ambitious concept released so far is a global network of Spotters to monitor the waters around coral reefs, which are dying off at a rapid rate as oceans heat up. Scientists studying the effects of climate change on corals generally rely on estimates of sea surface temperatures provided by satellites, which miss important fluctuations over short distances and brief periods of time, and by sensors that must be attached to reefs by divers and later collected for data retrieval. By adding temperature gauges to hundreds of Spotters and mooring them around major reef systems, researchers could monitor localized conditions in real time and gain knowledge about how tides, winds, and other factors might affect coral survival rates. To observe corals, teams could use Tridents, which aren’t subject to the same safety limitations as scuba divers.

This summer, Sofar was actively pitching the project to funders, citing the opportunity to have an enormous impact on coral-reef science for just a few million dollars. Central to the proposal was the idea that much of the work could be carried out by citizen scientists, who wouldn’t need any specialized training, since Spotters and Tridents are easy to use. In addition to reducing costs and speeding up deployment, Lang believes, the most important benefit would be growing the community that’s actively invested in the health of reefs. “When people participate in the process, they care,” he says. “The scientific method becomes the message.”

It would be just like what he and Stackpole dreamed of back in their early days of tinkering in the garage: thousands of their robots on the front lines of exploration.

Executive editor Michael Roberts isÌęthe showrunner of the șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Podcast.

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Your Truck Gets Electrified

Rivian is building rigs to appeal to the green crowd and overlanders alike

By Will Egensteiner

Though the electric-vehicle startup Rivian was founded ten years ago, the company intentionally flew under the radar until 2018, when it pulled back the curtain on pickup at the L.A. Auto Show. Why spend nearly a decade avoiding the limelight? Founder and MIT mechanical-engineering grad R.J. Scaringe and his team were quietly developing a battery system that could hold enough power to get you far off the beaten path and was sufficiently rugged to withstand the bumps along the way. The result? The world’s first full-featured electric truck.Ìę

“There wasn’t really someone making a vehicle that catered to the outdoor adventurer and that was also conscious of the environment,” says Jeff Hammoud, Rivian’s vice president of design. “It’s amazing to see how many people have a Prius or a Tesla as a daily driver, and then when they go on adventures, they’ve got a Jeep or a Tacoma.”

The midrange R1T runs on a 135-kilowatt-hour battery pack—good for up to 300 miles—­integrated into the floor of the cab. The four-wheel-drive version has four motors that sit above the wheels, providing 750 horsepower. But the rig’s defining feature is what it »ćŽÇ±đČőČÔ’t have: an internal combustion engine. The big compartment where a normal truck would have an engine is an 11.7-cubic-foot space called the frunk. Where the truck bed meets the cab, there’s a gear tunnel big enough to accommodate a snowboard.

The R1T isn’t cheap: it will be priced at $69,000 when production begins in 2020. And if Tesla’s factory issues and struggles scaling are any indication, making a mainstream electric vehicle can be tricky. But plenty of big names are optimistic that Rivian can deliver on its promises. The company has already secured $700 million in investment from Amazon and another $500 million from the Ford Motor Company. And perhaps most notably, they’ve recruited Alex Honnold as an ambassador.

Gear that Disappears

It »ćŽÇ±đČőČÔ’t get recycled
it turns to dust

By Ariella GintzlerÌę

For more than a decade, companies have been doing whatever they can to up their green bona fides, investing in everything from enviro-friendly manufacturing to shipping methods that reduce packaging waste. But until recently, there were few solutions for mitigating the impact a product has once its life span is over. According to the EPA, the textile industry alone generated more than 16 million tons of solid waste in 2015. But what if all our stuff—jackets, water bottles, tents, coolers, and sleeping bags—simply disappeared when we were done with it? That’s the goal of the latest weapon in the green arms race: biodegradability.

Leading the way is , which in 2018 introduced Bio, a line of high-performing synthetic insulation and fabric that break down when they hit the landfill. Lab tests in accelerated conditions showed 80 percent degradation in 394 days. (The company declined to provide real-world degradation rates.) Vanessa Mason, the brand’s senior vice president of engineering, says Bio “represents the largest investment of dollars PrimaLoft has made into the development of any technology since the company’s founding in 1988.”

In fall 2020, companies like Helly Hansen and L.L.Bean will release apparel featuring the fabric, and other PrimaLoft partners are working on concepts for fully biodegradable garments, zippers and all. Adding to that, hard-goods manufacturers like Igloo and Casus have recently released biodegradable coolers and grills, and Bella Eco has started making women’s underwear, bras, and leggings that break down at the end of their life span.Ìę

Of course, it’s pointless to make biodegradable gear if it »ćŽÇ±đČőČÔ’t perform well, so PrimaLoft spent two years making sure that the materials were up to company standards. “The biggest challenges were the incredibly long period of time and high cost of the testing required to ascertain the biodegradation rate,” Mason says. “Every fiber iteration or change to the fiber composition had to be tested.”Ìę

Given that reality, it might be a while before we can toss our entire gear closets into the compost pile with our eggshells and coffee grounds, but soon we’ll at least be able to start with our jackets.

With One Hand Behind Your Back

A true one-handed multitool has long been the holy grail of gear design. Enter the ($140), which uses magnets to hold its two sides closed. Simply slide your thumb between them to flick open the P4 and use the pliers (or any of the other 20 tools) single-handed. —Will Taylor

Insurance for Risk-Takers

On-demand policies change the game for athletes

By Dean King

Sooner or later, most outdoor enthusiasts encounter a pitch too steep, a bend too tight, or an immovable object on the trail, and then it’s ass-over-elbows. But now there’s backup: Buddy, an on-demand insurance policy that you can buy on your phone or laptop in minutes, 24/7, from virtually anywhere. As their inspiration for the startup, founders Charles Merritt, David Vogeleer, and Jay Paul, all avid outdoor athletes, cite rising health-care deductibles—the U.S. average for individuals is around $4,000—and out-of-pocket medical expenses for their friends who’ve been hurt mountain biking, skiing, and pursuing other adventure sports. “We have dozens of stories about ourselves, friends, and others who’ve been injured,” says Paul, 59, who has worked in the insurance industry for more than 25 years. “I personally have been to the emergency room four times through the years for everything from broken ribs and a broken shoulder to lacerations.”

At Buddy, which is backed by Lloyd’s of London, accident coverage costs $10 for a day, $21 for a week, or $55 for a month, and payouts range from $500 to $50,000. There’s no deductible, and the payout can be used for any purpose.

So far, Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas have given Buddy the thumbs-up and are currently the only states in which you can purchase a policy if you’re a resident. Once purchased, the policy covers you wherever you plan to adventure, whether it’s your backyard, across the U.S., or internationally. Buddy expects to be available for purchase in dozens of other states by mid-2020. And you don’t have to worry about being rejected: everyone is eligible for Buddy’s policies.

Meanwhile, other companies with similar approaches have hit the market. There’s Spot, which is rolling out accident and life insurance geared toward the adventurous with prices varying by state, as well as Trov, which covers gear (like bikes and skis) on a sliding scale that starts at less than $1 a day. So when you’re on the edge of a gnarly couloir or about to paddle Class IV rapids and suddenly get the heebie-jeebies, you can now get a last-minute safety net. “Our goal,” Paul says, “is to help outdoor enthusiasts live their lives more fearlessly.”

Fat Suit

Surfers stay warmer with artificial blubber

By Peter Andrey SmithÌęÌę

Submerge yourself in water below 50 degrees and you might last an hour before losing consciousness. Wearing a neoprene wetsuit or a drysuit can double that, but even those getups have issues. In 2017, Jeffrey Moran, then a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, interviewed surfers in San Diego, a professional underwater photographer, and curators at the New England Aquarium in Boston. He identified two complaints about wetsuits: they’re not warm enough, and they’re too difficult to get in and out of.

Moran, now a professor at , devised a way to roughly triple survival times in 50-degree water wearing only a wetsuit. Wetsuits are made of neoprene, a foam insulation that traps tiny air bubbles. By putting a suit inside a sealed container and pumping it with xenon or krypton gas, Moran and his colleagues at MIT found that it’s possible to replace those air pockets with inert gas. This, he says, results in wetsuits that are 40 percent thinner or have double or triple the insulating properties.

The team dubbed the invention artificial blubber and their first scientific paper was published in 2018. The gas treatment »ćŽÇ±đČőČÔ’t require a specialized suit, but the downside is that the effect lasts only about 20 hours before the gas leaks out. “You don’t want to have to recharge your wetsuit every time you go for a dive,” Moran says. Now he’s trying to find a pliable material that will trap the gases indefinitely, perhaps the stuff used in space blankets that marathoners wear after crossing the finish. A silver lining in the suit would “not only prevent the gas from diffusing out,” he says, “it would also reflect some of the thermal radiation produced by the diver back into the body.”

Clear the Air

Across the American West, fire season is over a month longer than it used to be, on average. The freestanding ($799) runs smoky air through two filters to remove contaminants. And it looks a lot better than an HVAC nestled in the corner of your bedroom. —W.T.

Natural-History Horror Films

The best way to get people to do something about climate change is to freak them out with epic imagery

By Luke Whelan

Near the end of the first episode of the Netflix nature series Our Planet, which streamed in 33 million households after premiering last April, the camera pans over the vast Greenland ice sheet, then lingers on a bird’s-eye view of where it suddenly meets the ocean. Small pieces of ice start to crumble, then larger chunks, and finally, as the symphonic music swells, whole sheets explode into the sea. “Within 20 minutes, 75 million tons of ice break free,” observes David Attenborough.

This scene is one of many in the Emmy-nominated, eight-episode series that combine cinematic fireworks with the urgent message of human-caused climate crisis and habitat destruction. Coproducers Keith Scholey and Alastair Fothergill mastered the use of cutting-edge camera technologies and natural-­history storytelling while working for the BBC Natural History Unit (the outfit behind the acclaimed Planet Earth and Blue Planet series). For Our Planet, they employed the same tools and techniques but with the focused purpose of presenting the terrifying transformations unfolding around the globe. “We knew from past experience that if you don’t dazzle, you won’t get the big audience,” Scholey says. “And if you don’t get the big audience, you’re wasting your time with the message.”Ìę

A crew of 600 spread out across 60 different countries with drones and 4K cameras rigged with custom-built stabilization systems to capture sequences in ultra HD that are as devastating as they are stunning. An underwater camera illuminates Australia’s Great Barrier Reef before and after a massive coral-bleaching event. Drones follow endangered bluefin tuna and a rare blue whale and her calf as they swim through the open Pacific Ocean. High-­resolution satellite images reveal massive phytoplankton blooms off the Florida Keys. This phenomenon plays an important role in creating the earth’s (increasingly unstable) weather systems, which the show captured using time-lapses of thunderheads. “We were constantly looking to push technology to its limits in the field,” says Our Planet director and producer Sophie Lanfear.Ìę

The collapsing ice in Greenland at the end of the first episode is the crown jewel. Land and aerial teams monitored an unstable glacier night and day for three weeks so they’d be able to deploy their camera systems—two on a fjord across the glacier and one on a helicopter to film above it—at the exact right moment. Their patience paid off: the calving event took place on the last day of filming, during the last hour of sunlight. “You need to see the magnitude of this kind of thing to get an impression of what climate change can be,” Scholey says. “It’s absolutely huge.”

Shelter from the Storm

For decades tent manufacturers across the country complied with a California state law that required flame retardants on all their shelters. Problem is, these chemicals are carcinogenic and wind up in the air inside tents. Applying the retardants has also hamstrung designers into relying on the same tired materials. But this year, became the first major American brand to stop using fire retardants across its entire line, which could spur a new wave of lighter and thinner shelters that won’t, of course, be sold in California. —W.T.

Ride Smoother

Traditional front-suspension design on a mountain bike telescopes to absorb the jolts of the trail. ($1,975) employs links and pivots to do the same thing, but it activates under ten times less force than a regular fork. That means a buttery ride over the roughest stuff. —W.T.

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From drone pilot , Islandia is a tribute to Iceland’s natural beauty.

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Last week, a video of people hydrofoiling off Capistrano Beach in Dana Point, California, made the internet rounds.

Even when the hydrofoilers zoom directly over the animals, the sharks don’t seem to care.ÌęSince drones became a ubiquitous sightÌęoff beaches and piers, amatuer filmmakers have been capturing videos like these and sending them to the media, who, in the words of Chris Lowe, professor of marine biology and director of the Shark Lab at California State University atÌęLong Beach, “.” People tend to get a bit freaked out when they realize how close we can unwittingly come to some of nature’s most refined predators.ÌęÌę

TheÌęShark Lab has started to use drone footage to study why sharks, often baby or pregnant ones, tend to hang out in shallow waters as well as how they behave when they encounter humans.Ìę

“We have a lot of footage and anecdotal evidence of sharks swimming around where humans play, and as long as people aren’t harassing them, the sharks just don’t care,” says Lowe.Ìę

And often “the surfers don’t even notice,” he says. For example, pro surfer Kelly SlaterÌędidn’t seem to be aware of a shark thatÌę his GoPro footage in 2014.Ìę

Lowe hopes to have data on sharks’ attitudes toward close-proximity humans in a couple of years. For now, “when there are a lot of people and sharks in shallow water together, most of the timeÌęnothing happens,” he says. However, swimming in groups and avoiding the water at dawn and dusk can reduce your risk of encountering sharks, friendly or not.Ìę

In withdrawal after the end of ? Here’s even more drone footage:

Sharks Approach SurfersÌę

Sharks Circle Surfers in South Africa

Tiger Shark Passes by Swimmers in Miami

Sharks and Surfers Within Feet of Each Other

Surfer Falls onto a Shark

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