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Drones Could Stop Ducks From Eating Mussel Farmers Out of Business

Can drones stop ravenous, seemingly unstoppable waterfowl?
Some ducks. Image: Flickr/cadillacdeville2000

On Canada's east coast, farming the kind of mussels that might fuel your fancier Tinder dates is a major industry. People's' lives depend on it, in fact—but hungry, seemingly unstoppable sea ducks are eating them out of business.

Now, to save their livelihoods, mussel farmers on Prince Edward Island are testing small unmanned aerial drones to see if they might scare away the freeloading ducks.

Sea ducks love nothing more than to snack on a tasty mussel, and farms are basically a buffet. In 2011, mussel farmers in Quebec lost almost all of the young mussels in their collectors to ducks. Having tried pretty much everything to stop the ravenous waterfowl, the Prince Edward Island Aquaculture Alliance is turning to consumer drones as a potential solution.

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"Mussel growers are trying to make a living and feed their families, and this is causing substantial damage to people's' livelihoods"

"We've tried different scare systems," Matt Sullivan, executive director of the PEI Aquaculture Alliance, told me. "Scarecrows, sonic deterrence similar to the ones used at airports, we tried underwater speakers, we tried pipes and boat chasing, lasers and falconry, bright LED systems, and different types of socking materials that the mussels are in."

"These birds are very smart so none of these things have worked."

The only thing that has actually worked, Sullivan said, are noisy sound cannons that scare the ducks away. But that bothers residents. Drones could be a quieter and more effective solution.

So, starting later in November, the group will begin flying a drone around different areas of the mussel farms to see if the ducks get scared enough to leave the mussels alone.

It's worked before. Drones have been used to scare geese away from beaches in Ottawa, and, as anyone who's encountered a vicious, spitting, and shitting Canadian goose knows, that's actually incredibly impressive. Remote-controlled planes made to look like real birds have been floated as a solution for keeping airports clear of fowl, too.

Now, Canadian mussel farmers desperately need these successes to be repeated on the water, Sullivan said.

"It's people's livelihoods," Sullivan said. "Mussel growers are trying to make a living and feed their families, and this is causing substantial damage to people's' livelihoods. We're trying to protect an industry."