Tutorial intro: BluePoint: Mapping Marine Plastics from Above
This tutorial presents a practical, cost-effective workflow for detecting marine plastic pollution using a DJI Mini 3 drone and the DroneLink platform for autonomous surveys. Participants will learn how to design autonomous flight missions, process drone imagery survey using a lightweight YOLO model, estimate geolocation using drone image metadata and export results (GPS coordinates, classifications, sizes) to cloud storage (AWS S3). The session combines presentation with live practical demonstrations, showing how this accessible approach enables rapid deployment across marine environments (beaches, riverbanks, open water) and supports clean-up operations by local councils, partners, and citizen science initiatives.