Hi,
i recently came across a video of stocking fish with the use of an airplane. Immediately i thought of our dear community. Is it just me or you too think you can do it more effectively with the use of drones? I am not a marine biologist, but from the video above it looks like half of the fish died in this attempt, don't you think? Some guys from YT agree ;)
Anyway, what do you think? Let's say this is a hard to reach terrain, situated few miles from starting point. It would be a medium difficulty challenge to provide a platform for this task, wouldn't it?
Cheers!
Comments
This is in the Uintas, which is extremely rugged terrain. They stock most of the larger lakes with trucks, ATVs, or mule/horseback where possible but many of the smaller ones are simply unreachable except by foot, climbing gear, or air. This seems like a pretty reasonable way to get to those to me... they're more than a few miles from roads and in protected wilderness areas where people will tolerate one low fly-by from a plane, but won't tolerate 30 smaller drone flights in succession. Also, I doubt the cost is really all that much if you were to compare the long-term economics of unreliable and flimsy current-tech drones (they'd break all the time and you'd lose them all the time with a long-term fleet working hard day in and day out) to manned aircraft - especially in the context of payload capacity. 'Not saying it can't/won't be done with drones, there's just a long way to go to make them actually professionally competitive for this type of high-payload application.
http://digitallibrary.utah.gov/awweb/awarchive?type=file&item=1...
Drones aren't the answer to everything. You pick the appropriate tool for the job. They are not doing one lake a mile from a road, they are doing dozens scattered over many miles.
Typically these fish are quite small, an inch or two in length, so most actually survive the fall. Even if the majority didn't though fisheries managers don't really care about individuals. It's all about populations.
If you are going to do this a manned aircraft is the obvious choice. It does bring up the question of why do it at all though? It's just to feed some fisherman's fantasy of working hard to get to a remote lake to enjoy great fishing. Never mind that the population is completely unnatural.
When the drone can take 400lbs 200miles round trip get back to us...
If there is easy access to the area, just use a truck and bucket and dump them in the lake.
I am guessing this is a very remote location. Large payload and long distances is not a strong point for drones.
I've helped fly fish into our lakes in Canada. @Pete Johnson is right. It's a heavy task. A lot of people on this site forget that the economics of drones doesn't replace aircraft. Many of these aircraft are already in place and paid for, they just need work, so there isn't any upfront cost for the Conservation agencies that are doing this. You need thousands of tiny fish to populate a pond and it would take a swarm of drones to get the job done. It just doesn't make sense. That airplane, after two guys and fuel, can still carry about 400 lbs and fly over 120mph. And besides, what a great excuse to fly! Although the fly-by stocking is new to me, we would always land.
@Pete Johnson, you can easily divide the amount of fish lets say by 10, and simply make 10 loops with a drone. Just charge the lipos and you are ready for next round. You don't have to make the approach so fast, so probably more than half of the fish will end live in water ;).
If the distance is really larger than 2 miles this frame should do the job http://drone.trafficmanager.net/uav/buy-drone-fpvok-3m-fly-wing-big...
Man, I have heard of this, but I assumed they landed!
Townships are still paying top dollar for aerial photography taken by large piston engine airplanes... Probably some sort of laundering for all I know :) hehehehe