ENRICH Voyage: 139 Multirotor Drone Flight Logs from the Southern Ocean, 2019

139 remotely piloted aircraft flights were conducted from the RV Investigator during the ENRICH voyage in the Southern Ocean between January and March 2019. The dataset contains decoded flight telemetry including geographic position, flight duration, height, and distance metrics. Data was collected by the Marine National Facility to support whale photogrammetry, photo-identification, blow sampling, and environmental sampling.

Use Cases

• Analyzing whale sighting and behavioral observation patterns based on flight paths and timestamps mentioned in the description
• Modeling drone flight performance and operational limits in marine environments based on recorded flight duration and distance metrics
• Correlating surface water trace metal samples with geographic positions from concurrent drone flights
• Calibrating photogrammetry models for whale size estimation using flight height and position data

Strengths

• Contains data from 139 distinct flights, providing a substantial operational record
• Includes telemetry from three specific RPA platforms: DJI Inspire 2, DJI Phantom 4, and DJI Phantom 4 Pro
• Covers a defined temporal range from 25 January to 25 February 2019 during a major research voyage
• Records geographic position and flight metrics referenced to a known launch point 12 meters above sea level

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
• Flight heights are referenced to the launch deck and may include negative values, requiring careful interpretation

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network via data_gov_au, collected during the Marine National Facility RV Investigator voyage IN2019_V01 (ENRICH)

Collection Method

Flight telemetry decoded from DJI flight logs of multirotor remotely piloted aircraft deployed from the research vessel

Time Range

January to March 2019, with flights conducted between 25 January and 25 February 2019

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-10 00:57:26.453021; freshness should be verified

Geography

Southern Ocean, specific locations during the ENRICH voyage