At the back end of 2022, WildstreamTV set out to tackle the challenges of truly remote and off grid recording. The subject being otters on the West coast of Scotland. Whilst otters are not especially difficult to find or watch, even from the comfort of your car, it was the intimate behaviours that WildstreamTV wanted to capture, without human presence.
As with all our work, our camera systems are remote and unmanned. For us, this is vital in recording a truly natural, undisturbed behaviour.
Of course, the most simple way to record wildlife in this way is to use trail cameras and there’s many people doing it with really lovely results. With these units now capturing in 4K, they are a great, unobtrusive method to record footage without any human presence. Indeed, WildstreamTV first started out in this way, many years ago and we still use them now. However, trail cams have their limitations and whilst we still use them, occasionally in our work, we’ve always desired constant coverage as this is the only way we can truly capture seldom seen footage. Trail cameras rely on a motion trigger and it’s often luck as to how the animal behaves in frame and with only a 20 second capture window – it only tells part of the story.
The highly innovative use of IP camera technology to film wildlife has been a technique we have perfected over the last 8 years to capture intimate footage of both otter and kingfisher behaviour. Here’s a reminder of some of the unmanned behaviour captured:
Up until now we’ve always had available electricity to power our systems but doing this truly off grid with any hope of success was going to be a truly wild challenge.
We chatted to technology company, West Country Tech about the project and they immediately got what we were trying to do, albeit not straight forward. Not only did they share our excitement but they provided us with the necessary hardware to help complete the project. As there was no power or possibility of ethernet for this project, the system would need to be installed with a standalone power source and a hard drive big enough and reliable enough to store any data we may capture.
Tom from West Country Tech got onboard from the first conversation and we’re grateful to him and his team for rapidly supplying what we needed and supporting the work we do. Tom’s company specialises in IP solutions for rural based organisations, especially farms.
WildstreamTV is a Somerset-based charity, so Scotland was quite a leap, not only in location but in just how we would achieve the plan, with no available power.
I discussed the project with Scotland-based artist, Andy Mortley. Both he and his wife, Helen Mortley have extensive knowledge of otters, including rehabilitation of orphaned cubs across the West coast of Scotland. Andy and Helen are both established artists and draw on the natural world to inform their artwork.
As founders, both myself and Phil knew instinctively that Andy was a good fit and so invited him to join WildstreamTV to help roll out the otter project in Scotland.
During the winter of 2022/2023 much testing was underway with the design and developement of a ‘Mobile WildstreamTV’ system. We’ve lost count of the hours spent trying out different methods and calculating amps/batteries/solar. It’s been a steep learning curve but a hugely enjoyable one. Andy’s creativity has played a significant part in the project, but more on that another time.
The location, as always will remain undisclosed but due to the nature of the system, it will move to different locations over a year-long period. As with all our work, we carry out extensive fieldcraft but ultimately we never know what we may capture and that’s the thrill that keeps us going.
WildstreamTV is set to monitor both the differences and similarities in behaviour of coastal otters alongside the otters we have already recorded for over 10 years in Somerset.
The project is now well under way and we will tell you more over the course of the coming year. You can sign up for our newsletter to stay informed and of course, any donations to help keep our work going is always gratefully received. If you know of any organisation that would benefit from having our films, please do get in touch.
Best wishes to you all,
S-J Cooper-White (Co Founder)
