Crowd sourcers Needed: view satellite images

American flagged schooner, the S/V NINA was declared by Rescue Coordination Center--New Zealand to be sunk in some undetermined catastrophic manner soon after noon of June 4th during their Crossing The Ditch (New Zealand to Australia).

No searches turned up any debris but searches started a few weeks after likely trouble.

Anyway, crowd sourcers need volunteers to view satellite images and tag them if you see a life raft or a ship.

Tomynod is the site that intends to profit from Digital Globe.

Seven Souls Aboard either the NINA or its Life Raft await your help.

Nina Search

link says I need to sign up, which I didn't. OK I'll give it a go, this could be fascinating

Fleastiff, (A)what's with your interest in this?(B) Is volunteers viewing satellite images in case maybe "you see a life raft" for real? In all honesty, this seems faintly ridiculous.

You can sign in as Guest if you like.

Crowdsourcing is one of the new buzzwords of taming Big Data: everything from computer games after a major earthquake to skilled Mechanical Turkers.

I admit the vessel sailed quite some time ago and the three or four gales were severe. She may have been forced into the shipping lanes. Or she may have pitch poled right under to sixty or eighty feet and had the companionways blocked or more likely simply lost the garboards and therefore lost her keel in an instant. I don''t know.

Skipper was excellent sailor but ahem, "independent minded". Wife and son were excellent blue water sailors. 73 year old Evi was sharp as a whip navigator and experienced blue water sailor. Even 19 year old Danielle Wright was an experienced blue water sailor. Only the two vagabonds taken on as extra crew were really landlubbers. They sailed five weeks late in the season due to installation of a replacement engine.

Fort Lauderdale bar full of "yachties" tolled eight bells and read out their names as Died at Sea and served almost two hundred rounds of free Grog in their memory several weeks ago. Its mainly Danielle's parents who don't want to have lost their only child at 19 and have spent thousands to have satellites re-tasked.

Do you now or did you ever have a sailboat or motorboat?

Well, it says I've looked at 65 maps now. I guess they'll be sending me a paycheck pretty soon [vbg]

The below from the site explains a lot

The various internet searchers who have logged onto Tomnod for the Nina Search have identified additional areas of interest as well as the areas determined by drift modeling software.

Over 5,000 searchers are reviewing satellite images provided to them by Tomnod. Any one searcher's "hit" will require other searchers to also find the same "hit" before it bubbles up as a serious lead.

Tomnod still needs satellite image viewers of The Ditch (Tasman Sea) in search of the Nina or its life raft or a debris field.

Quote: got this pop-up

75 Square Kilometers Explored!
You have explored 75 square kilometers so far!

I suspect only Fleastiff and I are doing this? It is very boring of course. Seems to me that software should be able to screen out empty seas and only have image viewers look where there is some kind of possible something.

It has crossed my mind that they don't really need humans, but what motivation then for all this busy work?

Quote: odiousgambit

Seems to me that software should be able to screen out empty seas and only have image viewers look where there is some kind of possible something. It has crossed my mind that they don't really need humans, but what motivation then for all this busy work?

TexasEquusearch Mounted Search and Recovery Team (www.texq.org) is desperately seeking whatever appropriate Machine Learning software may exist which would reliably speed up the process of recognizing and differentiating between yachts, ships and life-rafts including yachts and life-rafts in unusual attitudes. I believe the problem is that ordinary white caps of breaking waves appear similar and cloud cover obscures much of the sea. The search plane recently had to stand down due to exhaustion of donated funds but donations have resumed and the search is continuing despite lack of interim results.

The NZ official search got under way two weeks too late and started with a LKP that was 1100 kilometers in error, so all drift modeling was useless with such an erroneous starting point. Also NZ immediately assumed a life raft and it was later learned they were proceeding NW under bare poles at four knots and promised to update a position report "at six pm". This update never took place but could be due to any number of battery problems rather than to some sort of catastrophic sinking. They were getting near area where large high speed vessels operate at night without running lights but this is impossible to document and is still an unlikely fate.

Quote: Fleastiff

American flagged schooner, the S/V NINA was declared by Rescue Coordination Center--New Zealand to be sunk in some undetermined catastrophic manner soon after noon of June 4th during their Crossing The Ditch (New Zealand to Australia).
No searches turned up any debris but searches started a few weeks after likely trouble and in the wrong area of the Tasman Sea.
Anyway, crowd sourcers need volunteers to view satellite images and tag them if you see a life raft or a ship.
Tomynod is the site that intends to profit from Digital Globe.
Seven Souls Aboard either the NINA or its Life Raft await your help.
Nina Search

Reminder:
The parents of 19 year old Danielle Wright have exhausted all their funds in the search for their only child who was a deckhand aboard the S/V Nina which they believe New Zealand authorities declared to be lost at sea after only a perfunctory search in the wrong area of the Tasman Sea.

The governments of Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America refuse to render any assistance or provide military-scale satellite images or P3 Orion flight images. Six of the Seven persons on board are American citizens but US Naval assets have not been utilized.

There is only so far that cake sales and concerts can go when search planes cost twenty grand a day!

Texas and Louisiana have various dances, chicken discounts, sports bar nights, BBQs, etc. All raising money for the S/V Nina search. Cajun food, cajun dancing... anything that will bring in money to fund a 20 grand a day plane.