Drone News Roundup: Orcas Hunt Great Whites on Drone Video, Inspire 3 Captures Giant Land Portrait, and More!
BY Zacc Dukowitz
13 November 2025This week we’re covering drone footage of orcas hunting great white sharks.
We’re also covering a short cinematic DJI Inspire 3 video capturing a giant portrait painted on the land, why mapping and surveying are still the top ways drone pilots make money, researchers using a unique approach to find dinosaur bones with drones, and NATO deploying a first-ever “drone wall” in Europe following all the drone sightings there.
Now on to the links!
Orcas Hunt Great White Sharks
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In this drone clip, an orca pod chases juvenile great white sharks—then flips them. Doing this induces what’s called “tonic immobility”—a state in which an animal temporarily freezes. After inducing this state in the great whites, the orcas go for its liver. The behavior was recently documented in the Gulf of California by researchers who captured multiple hunts on camera, adding new detail to how orca pods specialize in hunting sharks. Watch the video to see how it works in the wild.
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Inspire 3 Captures a Giant Land Portrait from the Air
This short drone video showcases the DJI Inspire 3 shooting a huge land portrait of a baby. The footage is shot like a reveal, with slow aerial moves that emphasize the huge scale and impressive geometry of the artwork. It’s a striking example of the Inspire 3’s cinema workflow on a large outdoor set, with long, steady tracking and plenty of detail, even for wide shots.
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Mapping & Surveying Are Still the #1 Way Drone Pilots Make Money
Source: Drone Industry Insights
Mapping and surveying remain the commercial drone industry’s workhorse in 2025. Drone Industry Insights recently reported that this category—the top category for three years running—is used by 35% of drone pilots. The draw? Repeatable revenue and clear ROI: faster data capture, improving quality, and mature software workflows have kept mapping and surveying at the center of paid work. Follow the link below to learn more about the DII report, or learn about our Drone Mapping Essentials course here.
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Researchers Discover New Way to Find Dinosaur Bones with Drones
Credit: University of Reading
At Dinosaur Provincial Park—a UNESCO World Heritage Site—in Alberta, Canada, scientists are using bright orange lichen to find dinosaur skeletons. This lichen, which is easy to spot from the air, tends to grow more on exposed dinosaur bones. Drones are key to this approach, capturing imagery from about 99 feet (30 meters) in the air, where the orange lichen stands out. By keying on the lichens’ spectral signature rather than the bones themselves, the team was able to flag likely bonebeds faster and cover more ground with less impact—creating a new way to use drones for finding dinosaur bones in paleo fieldwork.
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NATO Allies Begin Deploying Counter-Drone “Wall” on the Eastern Flank
An illustration of NATO’s drone wall concept
Poland and Romania have started using AI-driven counter-drone systems to detect and intercept hostile UAVs. These are early moves by NATO countries on the eastern flank of Russia to roll out a 1,850-mile “drone wall” after a surge of drone incursions. (The result won’t be a continuous “wall” so much as a patchwork of various counter UAS measures along NATO borders.) These drone incursions have been linked to Russia, and have led to a huge wave of drone sightings across Europe. Some have speculated that Russia is flying into neighboring countries to intimidate NATO members, and remind them that they are, in a real way, also on the frontlines of the war in Ukraine. The drone wall deployments focus on fast detection and neutralization around critical infrastructure, including airports, energy sites, and border areas, with additional allies expected to join as systems and funding come online.
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