Talking Technical
Barring any problems from bears, volcanic eruptions, and bad weather, WildCam Grizzlies viewers shouldn’t have any trouble seeing the brown bears at McNeil River Falls.
Getting the live video signal from the falls to computer screens worldwide is a pretty straight shot. “It’s all line of sight,” says Michael Yourkowski, of Alaska’s SeeMore Wildlife Systems. “The antennas have to be aimed at each other.”
The webcam’s wireless microwave technology starts with a camera hidden in a fake boulder that sits on the riverbank at McNeil Falls. The microwave signal is relayed to a transmitter on a hillside less than a mile away. Then it is picked up 30 miles (48 kilometers) northeast atop volcanic Mount Augustine on Augustine Island. From there the signal travels 70 miles (113 kilometers) farther to a bluff in the city of Homer and on for three more miles (five kilometers) to Homer’s Pratt Museum. The camera is controlled from the museum, where the video feed is relayed to servers at RealNetworks, Inc. in Seattle, Washington. From there, the live streaming video is published to the Internet through National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C., where viewers access it online in real time.
“The bears could knock the camera over, a storm could throw off the antennas a bit, and Mount Augustine—although not as active as last winter—may force us to move an antenna,” Yourkowski says. In remote areas with little infrastructure, satellite relay is an alternative way to transmit video signals. Microwave as well as satellite relay allow the transmission of a large amount of data per second, but—unlike satellite—the microwave transmission is private and therefore readily available and more affordable. “Broadcasting actual video signals,” he says, “will give us higher quality and, in the end, is more reliable than satellite.”
Pratt’s Part
So what does the Pratt Museum have to do with brown bears? Located on Kenai Peninsula, the museum is more than a webcam control center. In 1999—and in partnership with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, National Geographic Interactive, and videographer Daniel Zatz—it began developing a brown bear education center, continuing its pioneering efforts to incorporate the use of remote video systems, in museum exhibits. After the first year, National Geographic Interactive dropped out. But Pratt has continued its work, raising funds to present public programming featuring professional naturalists and museum interpreters who operate the cameras to present a virtual tour of McNeil and answer questions about bears. The renewed partnership with National Geographic brings its education efforts full circle. Says museum director Heather Beggs, “Using remote wildlife cameras helps us to better realize our mission of education and convey the importance of bear and habitat conservation.”